Inauguration Day 1977 was filled with bourbon, Col. Sanders, hope. This one will be different. | Opinion

Inauguration Day 1977 was bitterly cold — high temperature at noon was 28 degrees, coupled with a stiff breeze from the northwest. Capitol Hill staffers in the office of Ron Mazzoli, Louisville’s Democratic representative, had been given a choice of tickets to the inauguration of Jimmy Carter or playing roles of historical figures on the Kentucky state float. Then as now a sucker for a good story, I chose Daniel Boone.

I arrived at the Kentucky float — assembled, along with all other state floats and parade units, on the National Mall — at the appointed midmorning hour. The day before, the manager of the Kentucky Congressional delegation had left my authentic 18th-century buckskin suit — on loan for the occasion from the Filson Club, Louisville’s historical society — in some public place, where it was promptly stolen. After a frantic afternoon scouring Washington for a substitute, I located a polyester frontiersman costume in the closets of the Catholic University drama department.

That authentic buckskin outfit would have provided insulation from the cold, but not my ersatz theater prop. By the time I arrived I was already chilled to the bone. Then Carter and Rosalynn nearly induced hypothermia among parade participants by walking from the Capitol to the White House, thus delaying the start of the parade by several hours.

Colonel Harlan Sanders, 86 years old, an early Carter supporter and major donor, was riding in a specially-designed pocket installed front-center on the Kentucky float. We buried him in blankets so deeply that only his nose was sticking out. Astoundingly, among the Kentucky float participants I alone had thought to bring a pint of bourbon, though in defense of my fellow participants, we had been given to understand that the parade would be over by midafternoon.

In fact the parade was hours late in setting off. Harlan and I became very chummy, as I sacrificed my bourbon for the survival of the old man buried in the blankets.

In the Inauguration Parade, floats line up in the order of their state’s admission to the Union, so at least Kentucky — at 15th — was close to the front. Even so we didn’t pass the White House reviewing stand until after sunset, by which time the temperature had dropped into the low teens. (Pity the Hawaiians!) Fortunately I chose the south side of the float and could wave directly at Jimmy and Rosalynn. Afterwards I stumbled from Georgetown, the terminus of the parade, to my dingy basement apartment. I arrived more dead than alive—but Colonel Sanders didn’t die until 1980, so evidently my bourbon ministrations brought him through.

Now I am the old man, contemplating a radically different inauguration. From a remove of almost 50 years, 1977 seems so innocent, so filled with hope, compared to the bleak picture of America projected by the president-elect. Between then and now we have weaponized the nation with guns and smartphones and drones, each designed to exploit and encourage our darkest impulses. We no longer trust anyone, even ourselves.

Maybe I have become less innocent. In my teens I watched as the cities burned, white police turned firehoses on Black children, and American soldiers committed atrocities in Vietnam. But I hadn’t yet experienced a president calling violent racists “very fine people” or repeatedly demonstrating how the rich are exempt from the rule of law. I hadn’t yet witnessed the Senate majority leader grovel before a president he had characterized as “stupid,” “despicable,” and responsible for a “failed insurrection” in his effort to seize through violence what he could not achieve at the ballot box.

And yet I find hope and inspiration in the return of the president-elect. Those who believe in justice and democracy need an occasional kick in the pants to remind us of what’s at stake and the continuing effort required to preserve it. He delivered the kick. We have risen to the occasion before, we can rise to it again. Act up, fight back.

At noon this Inauguration Day — Jan. 20, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day — I am gathering friends at my upstate New York library’s community room to read aloud Dr. King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” a classic of civil rights literature that might be illegal to teach in Iowa, Idaho, Oklahoma, and Tennessee, given King’s blunt criticism of “white moderates more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice.” I’m hoping to focus our energies on what really matters.

Afterwards I plan to return home, avail myself of my now-larger stock of bourbon, and consider how, in the next four years, I can contribute to building a proactive vision for my country of immigrants and their descendants, the descendants of the enslaved, Native peoples, and our land and all its creatures. Make America great again indeed. Let us provide the First Felon and his allies reason to scowl.

Fenton Johnson is a Kentucky native and author of seven books, most recently “At the Center of All Beauty: Solitude and the Creative Life,” a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice. He is a 2024 inductee into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame.