BLACK PRESIDENT, Chapter 38. John Little gets involved in South Side Chicago gang-life. President Nixon strolls out to meet protestors at White House fence.
<https://www.lincolnian.org/post/nixon-s-bizarre-visit-to-the-lincoln-memorial>, <https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08PCTKMM7?ref_=dbs_p_pwh_rwt_anx_b_lnk&storeType=ebooks>.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
John Little’s initiation into the Chicago gangs came almost as soon as he started riding a bike. Usually, on Saturday mornings, he and a bunch of other Black boys from the South Side neighborhood met at the Lakeside park, each kid racing up on his bicycle, showing off for the gathered crowd by skidding in, trying to better the last performance – spinning around without falling. Some, like Denny, the oldest there at 14, could execute a perfect sideways slide, locking his back tire and then switching the lock to the front just in time for the wheel to grab to a stop. Most, though, just slid in frontward, kicking up as much dirt as they could along the adjoining dirt path. After a good bunch had arrived, Denny spoke up.
“Hey, want to get some free money?” Everyone, of course, said “Yeah,” and Denny proceeded to explain how easy it was. They would just wait behind the trees that circled the park’s footpath. When they saw anybody come along who looked harmless, they’d attack on Denny’s signal. Denny said he’d done this kind of thing lots of times before. Where did everybody think he got his beautiful bike? He’d stolen it on a similar raid. So it was decided, with everybody agreeing to split up the money. Split up everything except for any fifty-cent pieces. They went to the leader. “Me,” said Denny .
John Little pedaled over to a thick sycamore and waited patiently behind it. He could see the other kids peeking out from behind their trees too. After about thirty long minutes of leaning there, shuffling his feet, getting more impatient, he saw a couple of White boys riding in their direction. John didn’t ask himself what they were doing there in this all-Black neighborhood. Maybe they had gotten themselves lost. Anyone White knew better than to venture much past 47th street, the border between the Black and White Chicago neighborhoods. Being that this was around 42nd street, these two were asking for trouble. John awaited the signal.
“YAHOO!” yelled Denny, in his best Geronimo fashion and suddenly there were black kids riding out from behind almost every tree in sight. And no matter how hard the two White kids rode, angling right then left, they couldn’t escape the web. In no time they were completely surrounded and stopped. It still being Denny’s show, his gang waited as he hopped off his bike and approached the fat White kid.
“Give me your bike and we won’t hurt you,” he told Mack Mason, an overweight twelve-year-old from 55th Street. “And I’ll need all your money too!”
Mack had just gotten the shiny, red Schwinn for Christmas, and wasn’t about to give it up. He knew how expensive a new bike like his was, had overheard his parents arguing about the cost for months before “Santa” had coughed it up.
“No,” he said, defiantly. “I won’t!”
POW, Denny immediately hit him in the left eye as the eleven other gang members and Mack’s friend Ricky Smitters looked on. Mack went flying backwards, his bike crashing down onto the grass. Quickly and effectively Denny had made his point. Mack had to choose between further pain and his valued possession.
Denny didn’t have to say you’re next to Ricky. Ricky knew by the shift in Denny’s line of sight that he was going to be the next victim. But before Denny could walk the few paces and punch him too, Ricky reached down in his pants pockets and pulled out a handful of change. He’d brought the extra money along to buy some comic books. As Denny moved closer, Ricky cocked his arm back and flung the whole mix of pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters as far as he could. Coins sprayed out into the air and landed all over the adjacent lawn. Immediately, all the Black kids who had been standing by idly leapt into action, running toward the coins, throwing themselves on the ground to pull the riches out from between thick clumps of grass. Denny ran over too, not wanting to miss out. Ricky knew the diversion was their best chance to escape and he tried to get his friend to hurry up and lift his bike. But Mack was too slow and it looked like the gang would be back on them soon. John Little had scooped up a quarter, two pennies, and a dime before he heard a loud, booming voice of an adult shouting in their direction.
“Hey, stop that!” cried out a Black man as he approached from the sidewalk that ringed the park. “You leave those white people alone, you hear!”
Ricky looked up and saw a well-dressed man in grey sweater-vest and neatly pressed pants with sharp creases, that could be seen clearly from where he was gathering coins. This clean-cut college student, named Homer Jeffreys, wasn’t going to let a bunch of hooligans cause more racial strife in his city. No way. It was time to get along, get integrated, or at least get equal.
Jeffreys chased the young Black thieves away, then helped Mack lift his bicycle while glancing over at Ricky to make sure he was OK. Jeffreys gave Mack’s back fender a push to get him going, and watched the White kids pedal off, back toward home. When Ricky told his story about the Black man saving them, his mother gave him a full scolding and lecture, mainly about the dangers of wandering into the Black section of town. Mack never told his parents, and John Little hid the stolen thirty-seven cents in a secret compartment inside his National Geographic magazines. He’d painstakingly cut a big hole in the center pages of four issues, gluing things together to form a secret hollow for his illicit items, just like he’d seen spies do on TV.
***
August 14, 1972
President Richard Nixon could smell the cigarette smoke in his wife Pat’s room, but he never saw her actually smoking anything. Her sweaters were particularly pungent, giving off the stale odor whenever he hugged her for photo ops or when the kids needed a show of affection from their parents. How did she do it? he wondered. When and how did she smoke without being detected in the White House? He tried to imagine.
Maybe Pat sat herself on the toilet, lit up, took a few quick puffs, flushed and threw the cigarette into the swirling water while the fan sucked the fumes out through the ceiling ducts.
And his wife had no problem downing martinis either. As for himself, he’d found that one drink would give him a buzz that lasted for about two hours. Two would make his eyesight blurry, and result in the need for an immediate nap. Three? Well, that many would make him forget where his reading glasses were, even if he was wearing them. And four! He didn’t usually go there! But he had seen Pat weaving and stumbling around their second floor White House quarters, slurring her words and swearing to herself, looking and acting like an old drunken bum.
Around 12:30 AM Nixon couldn’t get back to sleep. The night was warm, and the two drinks he’d had earlier made him wake up to pee. He felt restless. He’d then ventured out of the bedroom in his robe and walked the halls, acknowledging Frank Johnson at Security Watch Station #3 near the stairs. Nixon wasn’t always in a mood to see people, but on that night he felt like talking.
“Hey, Frank,” he said, standing on the thick carpet in his robe and bathroom slippers. “Feel like taking a little stroll around the grounds?”
“Yes sir, Mr. President,” answered Johnson. He knew his job parameters, as had been outlined by CIA’s Bissel and others. He was to: (1) keep Nixon under surveillance at all times, and also (2) guard his safety. So he passed himself off as a companion to his boss, a friendly face and help-mate. Babysitter was more to the point. But the job had its dangers. He made no mistake about that.
By the time Nixon emerged a second time from his room, having now traded in his pajamas for a shirt, slacks and a light jacket, it was around 1:20AM. The two men descended to the first floor by way of the front stairs. After giving a wave to the security coordinator at Station #1, Johnson opened the front door and held it wide for the President. Immediately, the men could hear the protestors chanting up a storm on Pennsylvania Avenue, a few hundred feet away. Nixon looked out and had an instant mood shift.
“Fucking snot-nosed kids...having a party. Just lay around out there like a bunch of bums. Can you believe it?” He looked over at Johnson for some response, preferably a strong concurrence.
“Yes sir. Can’t see it as a way of life. Sidewalk’s pretty hard after awhile,” added Johnson, who was, in fact, somewhat sympathetic with the will of the nightly crowd.
“Well shit. Follow me out there. I’m going to talk to them,” stated Nixon flatly, as he headed out across the tightly-cropped White House lawn.
“I’m going to size them up.”
Nixon’s father had used that term numerous times, as he and his brother, Donald, had grown into their teenage years. His father’s “sizing up” had often meant a full-out confrontation. More than once, old man Nixon had used the term “size-up” as a means of neutralizing the competition between his own hardware store and other like businesses in the same town. Find out everything about your competitors, Nixon Sr. had said, and with that knowledge you beat them every time.
As soon as the Station #1 guards saw where Nixon was heading they quickly called it in. Frank Johnson hit another button on the console and quietly uttered the words, “Code Blue,” which meant it was a “containable situation,” though still serious, and that all security must be notified immediately with regard to the “in person movement” of “Primary 1,” The President of the United States. So the alert, though mild, quickly rippled through all available in-house communications and security personnel.
Forty feet from the fence, one of the protestors spotted the two men approaching and raised his voice in a chant. Others, scrappy- looking youths were marching in a small circle about thirty feet away, joined in unison, “US out of Cambodia, US out of Cambodia, US out of...”
The words suddenly dried up as 19-year-old Felix Permante recognized the President. Before Permante could turn and call to the other protestors, Nixon was leaning up against the thick, ornate metal fence speaking to him directly.
“You there...,” Nixon called out, his voice sounding deeper than it usually did, in TV broadcasts heard by the teemager. “I’d like to say...How are you?” Permante suddenly questioned the grass he had been smoking a half-hour earlier. Had it been laced with acid too, he wondered?
“I say there, how’re you doing, young man?” repeated Nixon, acting out his most benevolent “statesman” role. No answer? He tried again.
“Nice evening we’re having, isn’t it?”
Permente was still too stunned to answer, but finally a stiff “Yessir” emitted from his lips.
“Just want you to know...that I care about every young man we have over there...in Vietnam...” said Nixon, thinking maybe the kid didn't understand.
“And...as soon as I can, I’ll bring all our boys home.”
Permente’s eyes were not focused so much on Nixon, but on the activity of the Secret Service men running toward the fence from two angles, about six large men in all. Just about the time the Secret Service guards arrived at the fence, other protestors spotted Nixon and started shouting.
“Tricky Dick, Tricky Dick, Tricky Dick...” chanted Betty Riley, a twenty-three-year-old ex-waitress from South Dakota, who had taken the Green Turtle Bus from Berkeley to be part of the protests. Apparently fearless, she approached Permente at the fence, swinging her sign back and forth like a hatchet. Jim Davis, one of the local organizers, also pumped his sign energetically, chanting “Out of Vietnam NOW! Out of Vietnam NOW!”
By this time, two of the guards had their guns drawn, but had not brought them up from a down-point position. The Secret Service Commander in charge, Frank Gifford, saw what appeared to be the beginning of a serious confrontation, and spoke carefully to the President. “Sir, I implore you. Let’s please return to the White House, walk back...” But to his chagrin, the President hardly reacted, did nothing. The excitement now fed Nixon's ego.
Security guards talked nervously amongst themselves while young rabble rousers continued yelling from the sidewalk. It was all about him. Little Dick. The situation – so much loud shouting – drove Nixon to dredge up a childhood memory, about some dumb kids he knew back in Whittier. A boy named Sammy, who had teased him merslessly in 9th grade, came to mind.
Where the fuck are those losers now...now that I’m living in the White House?
He then remembered Doris Mayfield, a very pretty girl he had always admired for her pert appearance; quite busty, attractive figure. He’d have liked to get in her pants, but she never gave him the time of day. What if she could see him that evenin – Mr. President! Secret Service running all around, all because of him. I would...I could surely get some now – a piece of ass, he mused happily.
Before Nixon could drift any further down memory lane, Gifford took the liberty of encircling him with his broad arm and gently turning him away from the fence, shrouding him with his own body in case some nut took a shot. The Secret Service men with pistols in hand kept their eyes peeled on the crowd, carefully scanning all the faces and bodies, ready to react to the slightest movement that might have signalled the use of a weapon. All pistols were unlocked, ready to kill if necessary. Gifford and his fellow agents knew that some demonstrators packed firearms, and the Secret Service Commander could not risk Nixon’s middle-of-the-night foray any longer. Guards heard Nixon mutter something about screwing a Doris, mumbling her name all the way back to the House.
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