You gotta love the internet.
It's an election year and I found myself thinking back to the more simple times when I was first old enough to vote. For some reason I kept fixating on remembered quotes about Ronald Reagan going down the corner to buy some magazines. I remembered it as a quote he would repeat often and how the commentators at the time would make snickers like, "I wonder what kind of magazines he's talking about."
It was "scandalous". It was funny. It was oh-so-much-better than reading about the latest suicide bombing in Iraq or about the latest revelation about the Bush White House exceeding the bounds of executive power envisioned by the framers of Constitution. [outing CIA operatives, firing US attorneys for not aggressively pursuing witch hunts, distorting intelligence estimates to wage an unjust war, .... oh the list goes on.]
This morning I read an op-ed piece by no less than George McGovern [originally published in the Washington Post] advocating the impeachment and conviction of Bush and Cheney. That's not a lone voice in some leftist political rag... not some unwashed, anti-globalism radical... but a respected elder statesman [a bomber pilot veteran of WW II, a former US Representative, Senator and presidential candidate] published in a leading national newspaper.
I found that I couldn't disagree with him, but a part of me really did wish that things hadn't gone this far.
That's probably what brought up the "down to the corner drugstore" memory, a longing for the scandalous issues of THAT time.
Anyway, a little patient searching on the internet and voila! It didn't take much to assemble a list of 6 separate tellings of the "corner drugstore" spiel by the Great Communicator, including primary sources for half of them. Maybe that's why they called him the Great Communicator... he repeated the same bits over and over again.
Here they are, for your own pleasure and edification.
For me, "going down to the drugstore to look at the magazines" has become a code phase for longing for a time when things were more simple.
(from http://www.quickchange.com/reagan/1982.html)
8/11/82 President Reagan tells The Time's Hugh Sidey that he sometimes feels trapped in the White House. "You glance out the window and the people are walking around Pennsylvania Avenue and you say, 'I could never say I am going to run down to the drugstore and get some magazines,'" he says. "I can't do that anymore." (see 12/9/82)
[article http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,925681-3,00.html]
12/09/82 "Sometimes I look out there at Pennsylvania Avenue and see people bustling along, and it suddenly dawns on me that probably never again can I just say "Hey, I'm going down to the drugstore to look at the magazines,'" - President Reagan discussing his feelings of confinement with a People reporter (see 12/16/82)
12/16/82 "Sometimes I look out the window at Pennsylvania Avenue and wonder what it would be like to be able to just walk down the street to the corner drugstore and look at the magazines. I can't do that anymore." - President Reagan conveying one of his regrets to The Washington Post (see 12/18/82)
12/18/82 "Sometimes I look out the window at Pennsylvania Avenue and wonder what it would be like to be able to just walk down the street to the corner drugstore and look at the magazines. I can't do that anymore." - President Reagan sharing a sudden thought with a radio interviewer
[full transcript http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=42130]
(from http://www.ludickid.com/lists060504.htm)
RONALD WILSON REAGAN, MASTER STORYTELLER
... [same quotes referenced above]
4. "Sometimes I look out the window at Pennsylvania Avenue and wonder what it would be like to just turn to my wife and say, 'Honey, I'm going down to the corner drugstore to look at magazines.' I can't do that anymore." (Jan. 13, 1983)
5. "You find yourself remembering what ti was like when on the spur of the moment you could just yell to your wife that you were going down to the drugstore and get a magazine. You can't do that anymore." (Jan. 27, 1984)
[article http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,954135-2,00.html]
