The year was 1960, and my third-grade teacher Mrs. Cole was giving me the bum’s rush out of her classroom. In the hall, she scolded me for disrupting the class. I tried to explain my side, but Mrs. Cole wasn’t interested. When she was through, she went back inside, leaving me in the hall to stew.

Mrs. Cole was totally justified in removing me from class. And she thought she knew the exact reason for my behavior. That’s where she was wrong.

 ****

For my eighth birthday, I received a board game called Men of Destiny. The men in question were the Presidents of the United States, from Washington to Eisenhower. On the cover was a drawing of Mount Rushmore atop a red, white, and blue background.

The board was made up of all the presidents laid out on a rectangle starting with Washington. As players moved about the board, they were required to answer historical questions.

After repeated playing, I memorized most of the answers. I knew that Andrew Jackson’s nickname was “Old Hickory” and that Zachary Taylor was called “Old Rough and Ready.”

I also learned that Franklin Pierce was the only president to have no changes in his cabinet although I was clueless as to what that meant. Kitchen cabinet, perhaps?

I memorized the names of the presidents too. I could name them backwards and forwards, always being careful to note that Grover Cleveland was both the 22^nd and 24^th. When your three siblings are at least eight years older than you, having some claim to fame or notoriety is essential.

One sibling, my sister Bonnie, shared with me her own knowledge of the chief executives. She was a senior in high school, bound for the University of New Hampshire. In my mind, that made her an expert. I became her willing sponge as she used the board to point out the good presidents and the not-so-good. Then she talked about two presidents for whom her contempt and scorn seemed boundless: Harry S Truman and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

According to Bonnie, Truman’s big sin was firing General Douglas MacArthur. I longed for a way to share in her indignation. Then I noticed something. If a president had a middle name, it appeared on the board. The exception was Truman. The “S” didn’t seem to stand for anything! To remedy that, I began rummaging through my eight-year-old brain for the worst word imaginable beginning with that letter. After finding it, the 33^rd President of the United States was re-christened Harry Sewer Truman.

The reason for my sister’s disdain for Roosevelt was less clear. Then one day, she burst into the dining room where I was seated and launched a venomous verbal attack on FDR. The source of her outrage was a column in the New York Journal-American by Westbrook Pegler. I listened to a litany of damning accusations, understanding none of them. And then she used the phrase, “crawling with red traitors.”  Now my imagination was properly inflamed. I had loads of experience with things that crawled (and crept, and squirmed and slithered). And some of them were red! I didn’t know what part of FDR’s administration had incurred this alleged infestation of creepy-crawlies. It hardly mattered. I was now firmly entrenched in the anti-Roosevelt camp.

 *****

On that day in Mrs. Cole’s class, students were doing oral reports. When it was Leonard Sampson’s turn, he brought a volume of the Golden Book Encyclopedia with him to the front of the class. His report was on some of the presidents. When he started talking about FDR, I was shocked! He was speaking of him in glowing terms! I can only guess what was said: perhaps the New Deal, the Lend-Lease Act, victory in Europe, and fireside chats were mentioned. I could contain my anger no longer. I jumped to my feet, yelling, “He was crawling with red traitors!” That’s when Mrs. Cole swooped in and removed me.

From what she said in the hall, it was clear that Mrs. Cole thought I was mad because someone else had dared to tread upon my area of expertise. But that wasn’t it! I thought I was standing up for truth in the face of monstrous lies!

The real truth was that, as an eight-year old, I didn’t know the difference between fact, opinion, and paranoid raving. Besides being a willing sponge, I had been an unwitting one. Westbrook Pegler was anti-Semitic, anti-civil rights, and pro-Joe McCarthy. Yet for a moment, I had been his fire-breathing mouthpiece.

When Bonnie and I talk now, we stick to sports and other safe subjects. When the conversation veers toward politics, we tread lightly. If a chief executive comes up, it’s usually the current office holder. Alas! My childhood interest in the presidents has waned. Even so, if someone were to rouse me from sleep at 3 a.m. and demand it, I could still name all the presidents forwards or backwards, always being careful to note that Grover Cleveland was both the 22^nd and 24^th.