09 September 2010
The Secret Plan
(Richard Milhouse Nixon in a contemplative moment. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images)
My sister Anook arranged a baby-sitter for Raven today so Mom can get out of the Village for the fall kick-off meeting of the Coterie, her social group.
Mom has been active in a variety of groups in the little city by the Bay since she retired from teaching down in Grand Rapids. That is a long time ago now, coinciding with the great change in America when we lost our collective minds.
I recall the trigger incident that determined the timing of her request to be transferred to the retired list. One of her high school pupils grabbed her in the classroom, a sort of bear hug, as I recall it, and she placed one of her sensible heels into his instep sharply in response.
You know what is coming, of course. Mom was in trouble, not the kid. Esteem issues, or something idiotic. Anyway, that incident was enough for her and she moved up north to be with Raven, who was still Dad in those days, and acting as Mayor pro tem of the village, having been elected to the village counsel after he closed down his wire fabricating company when the corporate holding company outsourced the labor to Bangladesh or someplace.
Anyway, between the Historical Society and Great Books and the Garden and Antiques Clubs, Mom kept active. That is only one of the reasons why this is so painful. While she was on her game, she was able to keep Raven’s problems in the background and maintain the prim façade of normalcy.
She is probably bored senseless at Potemkin Village, and announced to Anook that she had a Secret Plan to retrieve her life, which the wicked children had taken away. Within the hour, part of the plot was revealed by Bea, who had been recruited as a Spy to reconnoiter the property and make a clandestine report on the whereabouts of the car.
Mom is unaware that we have turned her agent network, and the members of Coteries are working as double agents.
The car is central to the plan, a ticket to freedom, if you will. Regrettably, it also the ticket to potential disaster. Given my natural inclination to favor freedom, I am in complete sympathy, but I still drove away from the little village with the keys to the house, the car and the garage door openers, and left the couple ensconced in their little apartment.
I felt like hell, and still do, though the 800 miles between us have dulled things. I had to think of the last time there was open discord in the family. We are a pretty harmonious lot, being dysfunctional only in the ways that all families are. The winds of 1968, that awful year, blew hard on us all, and it had some stark similarities with this one.
The War was raging, of course, and opinions about it rent society. Lyndon Johnson threw in the towel. Hubert Humphrey, the Happy Warrior, was anointed as his successor, but the Democratic Party was split by a great fissure of revolt.
On the other side was Dick Nixon, who played to the Silent Majority, the invisible Tea Party of the day. The Silents feared us, their children, as the hippie counterculture rose and the anti-war demonstrators paraded in the streets. I suppose you could call Nixon’s running mate, Maryland Governor Spiro T. Agnew the Sarah Palin of the moment, propelled by the vitriolic words penned by Bill Safire.
Anyway, the way that terrible year played out left wounds that took a generation to heal, what with Bobby Kennedy being shot down on after the California primary on the way to the disastrous convention in Chicago and the police riot against the demonstrators played out as “the whole world was watching.”
No wonder our folks did not know what to think. There had already been riots in over a hundred cities following Dr. King’s political murder at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis in April.
Nixon seemed to represent a calming influence, and he promised “peace with honor,” campaigning on the contention that "new leadership will end the war and win the peace in the Pacific."
He did not elaborate, leaving the details to Henry Kissinger to work out,, and the media termed the approach “Nixon’s Secret Plan.”
There actually wasn’t one, but it was all great fun to speculate about what it might have been. I had to think about the odds of Mom having an action plan to follow the assisted jailbreak as the miles rolled past under the wheels of the Bluesmobile.
When Raven locked himself in the bathroom a couple months ago, when they were still in the house, she spent a half hour with a big hammer knocking the knob off the door.
Mom will have a chance to implement her secret plan today, after Coterie. Will she have Bea drop her off so she can assault the door to the garage with a hammer? With the hammers locked inside, what might her approach be?
My plan was pretty comprehensive, but defense is alway problematic against a determined and wily opponent. I contacted the dealership and asked them not to respond to requests for service. I disconnected the battery on the Dodge, and tucked the carkeys in the pocket of my 501 Levis, the same brand and style of trousers I was wearing in 1968. I locked the garage, and drove away with the remote control opener.
It is all very curious, this echo of the last great rebellion, only I am on the wrong side. I find myself as Mom’s silent enemy, she being the Viet Cong insurgent to my reactionary imposition of order.
We will see later how the Secret Plan works through reports from through our double-cross intelligence network.
Turning off the Pennsylvania Turnpike for the last hundred miles down the big hill towards Washington, I found myself nodding. "Nixon's the One," I muttered. “He always was.”
Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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