His long ponytail hit my shoulder as he leaned to yell into my ear, “Can you believe this? I can’t believe it. Fuck, man!”

He punched the air in a hi-five, victorious way and I stepped back to eyeball him.

Crazy bandana man? Drunk bandana man? Perhaps he’s just lost … because we’re at a freaking political rally in Hackensack, NJ. What is it that he can’t believe? Hackensack and politics are like … peanut butter and jelly.  What’s not to believe?

His eyes were crystal, in a healthy “I had tofu and strawberries for breakfast” kind of way. Smiling eyes set among deep grinning lines, his etched face just a bit sun-kissed. He wasn’t drunk. He wasn’t crazy. He was giddy, just giddy.

^{Photo by JoAnn Merklinghaus/www.leadernewspapers.net} 

“Big Menendez fan are you?” I asked my new friend.

He swatted me again with his grey hair. “Talk into this ear. I’m deaf in the other. Almost deaf in my good one.”

Ah. A war veteran. So I yelled in his almost-good ear. “Excited about Menendez, huh? Or just really into politics?” 

Now he steps back to eyeball me, wirey eyebrow-hairs poking beneath his headband. “Who? Menendez? Fuck man. Kennedy, man! Ted Kennedy! I’ve been waiting to meet him my whole life.”

Kennedy. Of course. That’s why we were all there. I forgot, because, Menendez was the Senate candidate, the only one I would be interviewing.

Old Ted Kennedy. God, could he draw a crowd.

“He’s still alive?”

That’s what I said to my boss at the time, in 2006, who told me we’d be covering this event, and arrive early to ensure a good spot. My boss knew the importance of our attendance at this rally, which was local but not really. We were a weekly newspaper that did regional politics – quite well. But did we have to go to a rally with an old Kennedy? On deadline day?

I never followed the Kennedys. Perhaps I was just a tad too young, a tad too self-absorbed and politically who-cares. But my boss at the time knew we should be there. Though my contemporary, she was in awe of the Kennedys, not so much for their politics, but in the unexplainable way most Americans are.

I wasn’t in awe, nor was I in opposition. I simply didn’t know or care. But to disregard  the Kennedys is the same as dissing baseball and apple pie. It’s simply un-American.

I’d always tried to hide my Kennedy ignorance, though honestly I didn’t know John from Ted from the poor Kennedy kid who crashed his plane in West Caldwell. They were all handsome, died tragically and married attractive women who could accessorize. That was the extent of my Kennedy knowledge.

But people were in Hackensack that October day in 2006 not because of Sen. Robert Menendez, not because of the Democrats. They were there for Sen. Ted Kennedy, the elder shining star, the Hollywood equivalent of Washington politics.

Some people criticized our coverage of that event, and said things about old Ted I never bothered to confirm or deny, as rumors, opinions and accusations are impossible to get a handle on. Critics always speak the loudest, and always speak first, especially on newspaper website comment boards.

But I was there, at that rally, the streets filled side to side, spilling into every crevice.  There were few critics. Ted Kennedy had a lot of fans, and though he spoke eloquently, mentioning his wife and speaking of Jersey in a way mothers do of their newborns, it’s the fans – his fans – I recall the most.

People just loved him. They swooned and cried, clapped and cheered. I was glad to be part of that energy.

As people mourn Ted’s death, his success and failures, the curse of the Kennedy clan and the future of democracy, I recall that rally and the American spirit that filled a city street on a fall sunny morning.

And I think about the power of politics and that “je ne sais quoi” the Kennedy family will always have. And about my elderly friend with the ponytail, who wasn’t a war veteran at all, but a dodger, who lost his hearing in a motorcycle crash on an open road in Montana.

“It was beautiful man. That road. There’s no place in the world like America.”