Damp Torch

NEW YORK--"If he doesn't show up soon," a policeman told part of the crowd awaiting Senator Kennedy's progression up Broadway Saturday night, "we'll all catch pneumonia and won't be able to vote Tuesday." It was pouring rain, and the candidate was already an hour-and-a-half late for his "torchlight parade." The first segment of the show, about 150 cars decorated with Kennedy-Johnson posters and carrying electric torches, had passed at 7 p.m--on time--and has met an apathetic reception.

With the candidate delayed somewhere along his route, the crowd, huddled under theatre marquees and restaurant awnings, had to be content with sideshows. In front of Lindy's, a young boy sporting 25 (count 'em) king size Kennedy buttons, argued with a middle-aged Nixon lady. "Nixon's more of a Hitler than Kennedy is," he shouted.

At the Broaway theatre where The Music Man is playing, a Syracuse football fan, in for the Army game and drinking off the loss, asked a mounted policeman whether he knew a friend of his from Brooklyn. "He drives a horse, too," he added. The man from Syracuse had tickets for the show, but he wanted to see Kennedy. "All right," a policeman suggested, "you take this raincoat and hat, and I'll take your ticket and see the show." The same cop, when--in one of many false alarms--it appeared that the candidate was finally coming, anounced, "Any bomb-throwers please leave now."

At the Coliseum, where Kennedy arrived at 9:30 after canceling his parade, about a hundred young girls wearing Kennedy hats formed an alley for the Senator and lesser dignitaries like Mayor Wagner, Carmine DeSapio and Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson.

Kennedy came just in time for his nationally televised address and was greeterd uproariously after a decorous introduction by Johnson. The crowd wasn't much interested in the speech, although its cheered wildly at the end as hundreds of balloons fell from bags hung on the ceiling. It probably looked good on TV, but the mezzanines--which could have accomodated another six or seven thousand people--were closed off, and there were a thousand empty seats on the floor.

The several thousand who waited patiently outside in the rain for the Columbus Circle rally got the real treat of the evening. Here Kennedy and Johnson, who had been restrained inside by the time limit and prepared texts, let themselves go.

Johnson, in a meandering, crowd-rousing talk, told the people how the Democratic party was the party of "all the people," how the Democrats were going to insure that "all Americans will enjoy the blessings of liberty--regardless of race, creed or color," how three Massachusetts boys had died at the Alamo, how no one had asked Captain Joe Kennedy and Wilfred Wylie from Fort Worth what church they attended when they went out to die "so that all of us could be free," and what a pleasure it was "to stand beside, to stand with, to stand behind, that great and dynamic leader, that great Democrat, that great next President of the United States, Senator John F. Kennedy."

After this lavish warm-up, Kennedy turned on all his political steam: he said he had come to New York "without an escort" and quipped that Tom Dewey was out in California "giving Dick Nixon some last-minute advice on strategy." "You all know the elephants in the circus--little imagination and long memory--how each hangs on to the tail of the one in front. Well, in 1952 and 1956, Dick Nixon hung on to that tail, but this year he's running alone." Kennedy listed, selectively, some 20th century Republican candidates ("just listen to those names") and said that the Republican party has been "the enemy of progress since 1912, when they forced Teddy Roosevelt out of the party."

It was a lovely partisan show, and the people--who had been waiting in a cold, driving rain for nearly three hours--enjoyed it immensely. Properly fired up, as the crowd inside the Coliseum had not been, they marched away through the rain, shouting "Let's back Jack!" A peddler selling Kennedy buttons and hats did good business, and, looking very confident, the candidate went off to tackle Connecticut.