A little Buckland birdie gave me a call Sunday. He was responding to an unintentional call placed by my wife from our caller-ID directory. She hit the speed-dial, noticed it was the wrong number and hung up before anyone answered. It went through and left our number on the recipient’s caller-ID, so he called right back and I answered; Red Sox-Blue Jays game on the tube; refreshing pre-autumn breeze wafting through the parlor.

“Hi Hezzie,” I said. “Did the fellas ride you about your comments in my last column? I didn’t name you but I knew it would be no mystery to the boys at Fox Towne (Coffee Shop).”

He chuckled, comfortable in his skin.

“Don’t ever change, Bags, please,” he said. “I got a kick out of it. It’s no secret around here where I stand.”

The subject changed quickly, right to the previous day’s Kennedy funeral; what a powerful event it had been, the legions along the road, average people waving goodbye. I told him I had thrice seen young Teddy tell his tale of losing a leg and Sen. Kennedy telling him they were going to climb the hill together if it took them all day; that I could not control my emotions the first time or last, far too overpowering. He understood.

“The tears seem to come easier the older you get,” he confessed. “I don’t know why. They just do.”

Then it dawned on me: Hezzie had been a state man, an active Democrat; he must have met Teddy somewhere along the way.

“Funny you’d ask,” he said. “I spent yesterday afternoon searching for a signature of his that I saved from Mohawk Park. We kept the receipts around the office in a ledger for a couple of years. Then we’d throw them out. Well, that year I went through the ones we were discarding, pulled Kennedy’s out and took it home with me. I know it’s here somewhere. When I find it, I’m gonna frame it and hang it up.”

He couldn’t remember all the details of the weekend Kennedy visit but figured it was probably soon after Bobby had been assassinated. Teddy came into Mohawk Park in a camper, “like a Winnebago,” stayed for a couple days, “probably Friday and Saturday,” and had a tribe of kids with him, Bobby’s and his own.

“Maybe, even, Bobby and Ethel were there, too,” he said. “But I don’t believe so. I know their kids were. Bobby was probably gone and Ted had them.”

Teddy rented a cabin and spent a couple of days entertaining the kids around the confluence of the Cold and Deerfield rivers, swimming, picnicking; happy-go-lucky, pleasant to deal with.

“I wanted to give him a freebie but he wouldn’t hear of it,” Hezzie said, “insisted on paying, cash.”

At one point during the stay, the kids got a little frisky, throwing stones into the Deerfield River like kids do, and one of them hit the bath house.

“They were good kids, didn’t mean any harm,” Hezzie said. “But you know kids.”

Me? Yeah, I know. Used to be one.

Anyway, the startling sound of that stone hitting the building attracted everyone’s attention. Teddy didn’t overreact, order a timeout, get out the whipping stick, or even raise his voice. “No,” Hezzie recalled, “he just calmly said something like, ‘Boys, we must be more careful. What would we ever have done if that stone had broken a window?’”

End of story, indelible, Franklin folklore circa ’68.

Kennedy mystique.

I recently befriended an interesting octogenarian, I think 87, spry, a collector of coins, stamps and other stuff. His name is Harry. He considers me a good friend. I’ve had him to my home, helped him out with eBay, taken him for rides, stopping on whims to meet people in the hills of Conway and Ashfield while poking around old roads, probing cellar holes. He’s fun to be with, great company, lots to offer, loves local history, conversation.

I’ve known Harry maybe a year and avoid political discussion like the swine flu. The hints have been there from the start that we are not political soul mates. Far from it. So why go there?

The other night I called him to check if an order I placed on eBay had arrived in a timely fashion. It had. Then he delivered a dire warning to a trusted friend: our country is in very serious trouble, Obama must go. Our president is the agent for a communist takeover, has been planted from afar, serious stuff, could be the end of America as we know it; never again land of the free, home of the brave. Obama’s here to orchestrate a coup, dismantle free enterprise.

Just the other day Harry received a letter in the mail. There’s a movement afoot to impeach Obama. We must unite and get it done. Listen to Glenn Beck. He’s on every night at 5, the most watched man in the world; trusted, too. He knows what’s going on and is brave enough to expose it. Every night on TV. Tune in. Very serious. It’ll happen before we know what hit us. Then it’ll be too late.

Harry didn’t hesitate to to issue the warning; said because it’s on TV, it has to be true. You can’t just tell lies on television. It’s illegal. Beck knows what he’s talking about. He’s trying to save us.

Don’t get me wrong. Harry is a good man, a sweet yellow peach, salt of the earth. He means well, loves his country, has a big picture of the Virgin Mary in his apartment, and has been twisted by the right-wing propaganda machine. The stuff they’re saying should be illegal. That’s for sure. It isn’t. It’s pure manipulation based on lies. Very sad what America has become, what Reagan and the Bushes allowed Rupert Murdoch to do in the name of freedom of speech and the press, both inalienable rights, to build a corporate-media behemoth of misinformation.

I fear where it’s leading. I really do. Take a look at these gun-toting crackpots in the street, listen to the Tucson, Ariz., preacher praying for Obama’s death by the same brain cancer that took Teddy Kennedy, building a frothy flock along the way. They too want our president dead and aren’t afraid to say so publicly; would like him arrested and executed for murder of the unborn; call for it on mainstream radio talk.

It’s frightening. It’s serious. It must be stopped.

It’s interesting how column fodder sometimes arrives like sweet lilac scent delivered through the bay window by a subtle breeze-shift, no warning, this week a classic example.

There I was, sitting in my study, kicking off a new week, thinking about potential subjects, considering a weird Atlantic salmon development. Yes, it seems our regal, North Atlantic, anadromous fish are appearing where no one expects them — France’s Seine and New York’s Salmon rivers — while the well-heeled, half-century-old Connecticut River restoration program teeters on extinction, can’t buy a break. Go figure: target a river, no dice; ignore it, they come. Pack that in your bong and smoke it.

As I lean back relaxed, feet up, trying to get started, pondering an angle, the lede (yes, itching to procrastinate), I remember to make a quick insurance call to a friend. The receptionist hooks me up. I identify myself. He’s astonished: “Wow. I just sent you an e-mail. Read it. … Scary.”

I open my Inbox, it’s on top, a familiar subject: dire warning about “secret” Senate Bill SB-2099. If passed — surreptitiously, dark of night — gun owners will be forced to itemize weapons on their next tax return, pay 50 bucks for each. The implication is that, once itemized, weapons will be easier to confiscate when that inevitable day arrives. It’s a tired conspiracy theory perpetuated with zeal by the National Rifle Association. I tell my friend I’ve already seen it, am suspicious, so much so that I haven’t even Googled it. When it first came to my attention two weeks back, I dismissed it; figured, if real, I would have heard something, or soon would. My curiosity piqued, I hang up and Google it. Sure enough, a hoax, listed among urban legends on snopes.com, a Web site where I’ve found past e-mail cougar hoaxes. Even the NRA admits there’s no truth to the story. I’m not surprised. The whole thing reeked of fraud. I have fine-tuned my gray-haired nostrils for this type of stuff. This one didn’t pass the initial whiff test.

With that issue resolved, I go triumphantly to the kitchen to freshen my coffee. Once there, I head to the west parlor for papers that needed to come back to the study with me. As I pass through the threshold, the phone rings. The caller ID tells me it’s another West County acquaintance, this one a rare bird, rare indeed, a longstanding Buckland Democrat; a Yankee, no less, even rarer. He wants to know if I received his e-mail. Had I read the letter he sent to Wayne F. MacCallum, director of the state Division of Fisheries & Wildlife. Speaking on behalf of the Conway Sportsmen’s Club, he wrote to insist that dedicated funds generated by sales of hunting and fishing licenses continue to be spent only on related ventures. I tell him I glanced through it, not carefully, but would revisit. He promptly changes the subject, launches into a tirade aimed at the creeps we’ve all been seeing on TV displaying their guns at presidential appearances and widespread town-hall meetings about national health-care reform.

The good man is stirred up, fearful; you can sense it in his voice. He says he hopes these idiots don’t think they’re doing gun owners any favors. If anything, they’re hurting us all. He can’t imagine anyone justifying citizens standing outside of presidential events with loaded weapons strapped to their sides. He says they’re Ku Klux Klan and John Birch Republicans, very dangerous: “How can anyone defend this behavior? I’m almost ashamed to say that. I’ve been a gun owner and hunter my whole life, have never been for gun control, but this is absurd … insane.”

He probably knows he’s preaching to the choir. The subject has been dominant in my mind as well, fires me up every time I see those yahoos “packing heat” on the streets, holding up protest signs. My view is that 50 short years ago these bigots were burning crosses and marching in lynch mobs. Now they’re running the Republican Party, poisoning the media and acting frighteningly belligerent in the name of almighty God. Still, I’m surprised to hear a septuagenarian country boy from Buckland parroting my sentiments; he an avid hunter who cherishes his right to bear arms. There is hope, I think. These militia types are frightening everyone, not just me. Others know they’re providing red meat for the anti-gun, anti-hunting lobby; threatening everyone’s right to own firearms. I believe that. How can anyone with an IQ higher than their shoe size support these whackos’ confrontational behavior? They represent our Founding Fathers’ worst nightmare: rule by the rabble. It’s Madame Defarge breathing fire through automatic weapons, terrifying imagery.

Let us not deceive ourselves. This is not about health-care reform or taxes or gun rights; it’s about racism and intimidation, pure and simple; a combative reaction to a new electorate with the audacity to elect our first black president. The worst Americans among us cannot cope with it, feel like they’re losing their white-knuckled grip on the status quo, are backed into a corner, sort of like they were feeling in the Sixties. They won’t go down without a fight. It could get ugly.

I truly fear someone’s going to get killed. I was there during the Sixties, saw the Kennedys, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X assassinated, others gunned down in the streets, on campus, by law enforcement. It could happen again; has already with George Tiller, the abortion doctor murdered in a church, and the guard killed at the Holocaust Museum. It’s horrific stuff. The Republican politicians beating the drums to which Rush, O’Reilly, Beck and Hannity march in lockstep should be flogged. They’re calling liberals fascists, Nazis, communists, tyrants and worse. They know better. They’re propagandists, experts at blurring the -isms Joe the Plumber has never understood or been trained to philosophically compare. Look it up: fascism was not a liberal movement. It was a right-wing, reactionary response to the threat of communism, socialism and organized labor. Hitler didn’t hate Judaism; he hated the political Jews behind the Communist Manifesto, many others who were intellectually sympathetic to the proletariat, and, of course, those who led the Russian Revolution and struck fear into capitalist Europe. Out of this threat came nationalist movements that spawned Hitler, Franco and Mussolini, all experts at whipping mobs into a frothy lather. The rest is history.

The behavior of our right-wing demagogues today is inflammatory and disgusting. The wingnuts flaunting weapons around political events should be hauled off in paddy wagons, just like the peaceful, unarmed demonstrators who were whisked away from anywhere within a mile of our woeful previous “decider.” This cannot go on. It’s ridiculous, counter-productive for law-abiding citizens who love to hunt, shoot skeet or own guns for protection.

Lynch mobs don’t deserve guns no matter how much red, white and blue they wave; how loud they chant liberty and freedom. Don’t forget that the Confederate flag was also red, white and blue. Don’t confuse these “Birthers,” “Tea Partiers” or “Liberty Tree” nutbags with Patriots from our glorious past. They’re not Patriots. They’re bigots; Rebel brown shirts and Lone Star loons.

Why sugarcoat it? They’re dangerous.