Adele Ferguson

I’VE BEEN to a lot of political conventions in my day and long ago proposed the national confabs ought to be abolished, if not outlawed.

They are deadly dull most of the time although I was there when the Republicans nominated Ford over Reagan who was given a consolation prize of making the closing speech of the doings, a speech so compelling you could see delegates all over the room looking at each other with that “We nominated the wrong guy” expression.

I was there when Walter Mondale told Democratic delegates their taxes will be raised but Reagan wouldn’t tell them that “and I just did.”

I was there when Clinton made a keynote speech prior to his presidential candidacy that was so bad it provoked the most applause when he said, “Now, in closing...”

I WAS THERE when the Jimmy Carter's paraded daughter Amy around for interviews at a party they gave in New York. What do you ask an 8-year-old? Do you prefer peanut butter over jelly? The kid was crying most of the time and begging to be allowed to take off her party dress and put on her cut-offs. No such luck. A smiling Jimmy just dragged her to another reporter.

That was in 1976 and a New York cabbie told me he’d never been to Washington state but knew all about it. “It’s cold there,” he said. “Rains all the time. “Another cabbie said “It’s the apple state. You grow Delicious apples there.” He buys them when he can afford it, he said, 50 cents each for a regular. More for a big one. In New York they grow Mclntoshes, he said, “and the only way they resemble an apple is they’re round.”

CABBIES in Kansas City where the 1976 Republican convention was held said they were not happy about having the convention. They spent all their time tied up in traffic meaning fewer trips and making $10 to $15 a day less than before the delegates came. “Some drivers haven’t gotten over the Shrine convention yet,” one told me. “Everybody thought they were going to be big spenders, but they came here in trailers and campers, ate out of brown bags brought their own whiskey with them by the case and drank it on street corners. Nobody made any money at all.”

I asked one cabbie about Kansas City being third in the nation for its crime rate and he said, “I don’t know nothing. But I drive my cab by day, never by night. And it’s not a black problem or a white problem. I’m black and I live here. It’s just a problem.”

We Washingtonians had no crime problems in Kansas City although in New York, where the D’s convened, one of our delegates had his pants stolen, losing $750 in cash. Another had her purse rifled of $300 in travelers’ checks. Another surprised a man trying to enter her room and others reported signs their luggage was being gone through. As to my own experience, I strolled one night around the seedy fringes of the theater district with one of the delegates while we waited for our show to start, and we stepped inside a local liquor store for a looksee.

WHILE WE BROWSED, three young black men came quietly in and stood together in the center of the store.

“Can I help you?’ asked the manager of the men. They didn’t answer. “Anything I can do for you?” the manager asked.

They still stood there, backs together, saying nothing.

I turned and said, “If you fellows are figuring on robbing this place, would you wait until we’re out of here? We’re new in town.”

The trio of young men froze and the biggest one squeaked, “So are we!”

(Adele Ferguson can be reached at P.O. Box 69, Hansville, Wa., 98340.)