The Presidency

By Hugh Sidey

A half-century ago, when the sun rose in the clear prairie sky and the first school bell had tolled its sharp warning, the ragged muster for the two-mile journey to the old gray schoolhouse would begin.

Far south of the school along Depot Street in Greenfield, Iowa (pop. 1,800 and dwindling), rusty screen doors would slam, assorted mongrels would bark melancholy farewells, bicycle chains would strain and rattle. The great morning migration was under way. Jack and Richard would roll out on the level street, and maybe Gilbert would glide over from the next block with his longhorn handlebars and mud flaps. The caravan would pick up speed and conviviality as the wind opened eyes and mouths. Wayne, Eddie and Jimmy might fall in line just west of the town square, and by the time the boys were skirting the sagging remains of the tin livery stable they were no longer kids. They were the dawn patrol in Spads and Sopwith Pups, cruising in perfect formation, hats raised over their heads in exuberance and defiance of common sense, steering by the seats of their pants and the exquisite balance God gave such young animals. They would take the stretch of rippled pavement with whoops of joy, as if they were World War I aces plunging through the cumulus clouds over St.-Mihiel, round the corner with hardly a glance down, whish by Ord Martin's garage and then bank left for the dive downhill on the Red Baron's Flying Circus.

On that corner was a weather-beaten house with hollyhocks out back, like so many other tiny homes in a vast land that time seemed to have punished. Nobody in the dawn patrol paid much attention as they trimmed their machines for the final approach to landing and learning.

None of them could have dreamed that Jesse Jackson, candidate for President of the U.S., would, 50 years later, set up his Iowa headquarters on that forgotten corner. What strange force brought a man of world renown, a fire- breathing latter-day populist, to that dot of earth, that little corner of a small town that was never witness to anything more grand than a merry-go- round, a high school band concert and an ice-cream social?

The force is the old familiar one of want. Back then President Franklin Roosevelt was an ethereal radio voice so far removed from the people at the bottom of the Depression that there was no thought of ever being directly touched by the presidency. But the world moved. The dawn patrol went off to real war. Postwar prosperity banished the hollyhocks and the clapboard house in favor of a red tile farm-implement garage, which succumbed to modern recession, only to be replaced by a Sears catalog store, which gave way to even harder times.

Then came Jesse and his crew of fresh-faced young men and women. They cleaned and brightened the dingy garage with their rainbow banners, moved in computers and charts and all the weird paraphernalia of political crusaders. They are there now plotting a takeover of the Government from that little niche of America where a screen door slamming or a dog barking still echoes distinctly for blocks, and where kids still pedal furiously and bank down the old flight path.

Strange, wonderful system that somehow brushes the most humble. Does Jesse Jackson understand the deep farm problems, the complicated roots of small-town deprivation? His own background is so very distant. But he understands want and being left out. We will know before long whether that is enough to link the mighty White House to the tiny town of Greenfield in the history books yet to be written.