The year I was eleven, John F. Kennedy ran for president. My father was a Nixon man, my mother undecided. Even those who preferred Dick Nixon were intrigued by the young Kennedy and one of my aunts went to see him at a New Haven campaign event. She said he looked younger in person than he appeared in the black and white images to which we were accustomed, as the use of color photography was not yet widespread. Recounting what she saw, she kept mentioning his hair, her fingers brushing her own curls. Kennedy’s mane was thick, she pronounced and a deep shade of brown, almost auburn in the October sunlight. As he waved, seated atop the back of a convertible, she got to within fifteen feet of candidate Jack Kennedy and thought him handsome.
My father ran for a local office that year and when Election Day arrived, he took me to the polls. I was allowed to hang out at the registrar’s table where two gray-haired permed ladies, manned outsized binders of registered voters. As a prospective voter approached the table and gave his/her name, the ladies would run their red nail- polished index fingers down a list and place a large check mark next to the person’s name. Once checked in, the voter was allowed to enter the voting booth, its opaque curtain making a whooshing sound as it was closed, then whooshing open again once the vote was cast. My eleven-year-old eyes thought the booth resembled a place to modestly change your clothes, like a dressing room in a clothing store.
Throughout the day, Dad would disappear for short intervals, with some duties to perform as a member of the local Republican Committee. My memory of him was smiling broadly, happily grasping people’s hands. Like Kennedy he was energetic, handsome, his hair likewise thick but black, not grayed or thinned as it would later come to be. I overheard him declare, “I really think we are going to win this thing.”
Connecticut went comfortably for Kennedy.
Dad lost his election along with his man Nixon. The day after Thanksgiving that year, my father had what was then called a nervous breakdown. After we endured several hours of Dad’s ensuing mental mayhem, my mother ran into my bedroom in the middle of that night, locking the door. “We have to leave,” she said as she opened the window overlooking the cellar hatchway door as it had the shortest drop to the ground below. We jumped. Once outside, shivering in our nightclothes, we walked the mile and a half to my aunt’s house, evading police cars making their nightly patrols of our neighborhood.
“They’ll help us,” I insisted. But she said no. We hid behind bushes, ashamed to be running from someone who was supposed to love us and whom we were supposed to love.
I remember that day at the polls, November 8, 1960, as a moment in time when all the adults were happy, especially my dad. It was a day he thought he would win.
Patricia Adelizzi was born and in raised in Connecticut but has lived in Philadelphia, PA, and El Paso, TX, all locations featured in her writing. She now resides on Maryland’s Eastern Shore in proximity to the Chesapeake Bay. As the mother of three adopted children, Patricia’s work focuses on adoption, identity, race, history and memory and their respective intersections. Current work is appearing in Atlantic Northeast Magazine and Artists from Maryland.