Sunday morning September 8, 1974. I was thirteen years old and had been a news hound since I could read. My habit on Sunday mornings was to go down to my grandparents house- we lived up on the hill behind them a stones throw away. I would go down on Sunday mornings to sit on the front porch and read their Sunday papers with them. My grandma also always had a supply of Reece Cups and Pepsi in the refrigerator for me. This Sunday was different- I walked into the house and I could tell that my grandfather was as mad as a hornet. He was a temperamental man as  it was and it was easy to read him. I could tell by his look that he was in a very bad mood. What could make him this upset on a quiet Sunday morning. I walked into the room and he looked at me and said” That damn Ford pardoned the crook.”  I walked in where I could see the television and then fully understood what he was talking about. The reaction at the time was against the decision to pardon Richard Milhous Nixon and it probably was the deciding factor in the 1976 election where Ford lost a close race to Jimmy Carter. A lot of people thought there was some kind of deal behind the scenes when The Tricky One named Ford the Vice President- replacing Spiro Agnew when he resigned in 1973. The deal being if it came to it Ford would pardon Nixon. I don’t think that is what happened. Ford has always said that he needed to get Watergate out of the way so he could get down to the business of running the country. It took many years but years later many of the people who were critical of Ford then- think he did the right thing now. I have to agree. Ford to his dying day didn’t regret the decision- even though it cost him the election.