I had wealthy, Republican in-laws during the time when I was an undergraduate at UCLA. I was an older student, returning after my Army obligation and in a hurry to get to grad school. I didn't get along with my in-laws much. They thought my participation in civil rights marches was quaint. They thought I was a bad influence on their daughter. I especially upset my mother-in-law at a Halloween party just before the Johnson-Goldwater election: she caught me in the kitchen, toasting the Democrats with the black help she'd hired to cater the party.
However, my in-laws were generous and gave great parties if you forgot about the plantation atmosphere. At Halloween they were especially generous with the costumed kids, giving each an individual polaroid. They took hundreds of polaroids during Halloween.
A Halloween controversy had dampened the enthusiasm of local residents in the expensive Sierra Madre neighborhood where my in-laws lived in a sprawling ranch-style home. Trucks of kids from poorer neighborhoods invaded the area! Given the better takings, why not? But suddenly this lily-white neighborhood was getting trick-or-treated by kids who weren't white -- and a lot of them. The neighborhood didn't feel safe and exclusive any more. I left town for grad school in Oregon before the Halloween issue was resolved and soon got divorced.
Johnson beat Goldwater, of course. On the campaign trail, the Texas senator boomed about how he'd never send American boys to fight an Asian war. Right. We got Goldwater in the end, just a dishonest version of him. So goes politics: you vote for someone and almost always get someone else.
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