music for the card game. Jim was a big fan of country music, which Jerry despised. Jerry craved his classic rock, which Jim abhorred. On the night when Devlin Twins Music was born, Jim had commandeered the radio. Which radio station we listened to mattered not to my cousin, Quiet; he enjoys both country music and classic rock. And I enjoy all kinds of music, as long as it does not yell at me; that stuff, Americans, I can live without.
The game on this particular night was being played in the rec room in the basement of Quiet's house; back then Quiet had been married for a couple years, and his wife Lotta had given birth to their son, Stuart A. Riott, a few months previous to the card game that night. Before becoming Lotta Riott, Quiet's wife's name had been Lotta Smiley. Yes. Those Smileys. Unbeknownst to the mayor (and nearly everyone else in the village and township), his eldest daughter had been seeing Quiet Riott on the sly for about a year before the news of their elopement rocked the community. The Riotts and Smileys are not exactly the Hatfields and McCoys, but they are the closest we come to it in these parts. The Riott menfolk tend to 'marry late.' Uncle Pat did. And so did Quiet. So not only did Mayor Smiley's eldest daughter marry a Riott, but she married a Riott several months older than the mayor himself. And to top it all off, she had gone and married a Riott who is the son of the patriarch of the entire extended Riott clan, and Mayor Smiley's arch political enemy, to boot.
Well, Americans - it was simply delicious, and I freely admit to having enjoyed the mayor's discomfiture and chagrin in full measure, in the days and weeks following the marriage. And in these epages, I know I've already made clear that I am no particular fan of Mayor Smiley. But even I began to worry about the mayor and to feel sorry for him when, several months after the wedding, he still hadn't recovered. The mayor has a garrulous personality by nature, but that personality had gone fishin'. He went from being mayor of Smileyville 24/7 and proud of it (he is not a bad mayor, Americans, to be fair to him), to doing no more than the barest minimum of work incidental to his position. And the word quickly got around that Mrs. Smiley was now running the weekly paper, The Smileyville Grimace. Mostly what the mayor did, and for a very long while, was to stay home just as much as he possibly could.
And his daughter? Lotta did all she could to build a bridge back to her father, assisted by her mother, who was doing what she could to put the best face on the situation, although there wasn't much of a 'best face' to be found. The mayor was not mean or nasty to Lotta. Quite the contrary. Although he did not visit the home of his daughter and her husband, he was always glad to see her when she came to visit him, was always kind and gentle toward her, and was even polite to Quiet, on the few occasions when he accompanied Lotta on her visits to the home where she'd grown up. But none of it was any good, and by the time Quiet and Lotta were celebrating their first anniversary, the truth was clear to everyone in Smileyville: Mayor George Wilburforce Smiley V was a broken man, and Lotta's mom was showing the strain as well. And Lotta Riott found herself as worried and heartsick as a loving daughter can be. She had not set out to destroy her parents. She just loved Quentin 'Quiet' Riott, was all. But there you go, and there it was.
Just a couple weeks after their first anniversary, Lotta and Quiet announced to family and friends that they were expecting their first child. Naturally, during the months of her pregnancy, the number one topic in Smileyville was the question of how Mayor Smiley would react to his daughter giving birth to a Riott, to his becoming the (insert gasp of horror here) grandfather of a Riott. No one was encouraged by the fact that the mayor betrayed no particular reaction to his daughter's pregnancy and the impending birth of his first grandchild. He'd just spent the past year as the human equivalent of a lump, and Mayor Smiley continued to lump away during the months of Lotta's pregnancy. And while everyone involved tried to remain hopeful that, once his grandchild was born, the mayor would snap out of his long, long funk, no one really believed it would make any difference.
It happened that Mayor Smiley was up for reelection as mayor during the autumn when Stuart A. Riott was up for being born. The mayor almost didn't run; he filed his papers ten minutes before the filing deadline, and then failed to do any campaigning whatsoever - with a month to go before the election, he had not put out so much as a single yard sign, that staple of village and township political advertising. And then, a month before the election, Stuart A. Riott was born. Quiet and Lotta had not known the sex of their child beforehand, having decided that they wanted to be surprised. Assorted Riotts and Smileys were at the hospital awaiting the birth, including Lotta's mother, but the mayor was not in attendance. The baby was born, cleaned up, checked over - baby fine, mom fine - and then was placed on display for his relatives to see. At first there was silence; then a giggle, and then several giggles. And then Pat Riott, staring at his newborn grandson, exclaimed "Great God in Heaven!" and everyone burst into full blown laughter, including Uncle Pat.
Lotta's mom returned home from the hospital and told her husband he needed to come see his first grandchild. When the mayor feigned disinterest, she informed him, feigning nothing, that he would either get up and go with her to welcome his grandson into the world, or she would divorce him. Mayor Smiley went to the hospital. A nurse held Stuart up to the nursery window so his grandfather could see him. Mayor Smiley stood passive for a moment, and then smiled his first genuine smile in nearly two years. And then, just as Stuart's paternal grandfather had done, the maternal grandfather burst out laughing. And Mayor Smiley said precisely the same thing Pat Riott had said: "Great God in Heaven!" But then the mayor added to his own exclamation the following: "He looks just like me! He's beautiful!"
Mayor Smiley then visited his daughter for a few minutes. And, if nearly two years of heartache can be obliterated by two minutes of sublime and perfect joy - and I for one, Americans, believe that on occasion it can be - then in those couple of minutes the mayor accomplished that wonderful thing for his daughter, and for himself.
The next morning, Mayor Smiley was up and out early, putting up yard signs and campaigning for the mayoralty of the village of Smileyville, before heading to work at the building where, once a week, The Smileyville Grimace is put to bed. What's that? The election? Why, he won the election in a landslide. Heck, Americans, even I'd have voted for him that year - if I'd thought he needed my vote to win. But he didn't. Heh.
__________
Americans, I feel this would be an opportune moment to interrupt the interruption of my story about Devlin Twins Music, just long enough to explain a thing or two. I know you think I don't hear you out there, but I think I do. Many of you, for example, are wondering why each of these 'chapters' starts out like this:
DATELINE SMILEYVILLE - As if these were not chapters at all, but newspaper columns.
The short answer is that these are not chapters. These are columns, just not newspaper columns. I did not graduate from college, you Americans, and that is perhaps unfortunate, but no one could fairly say that I received no education at Middle Mitten University, in the good ol' hometown of Greening. I received, as far as I'm concerned, a truly marvelous education there. I could not have asked for a better, to be honest, and I imagine this 'Ojibwa' would have graduated Magna Cum Laude, if only I could have majored in organization-building and minored in newspaper column writing. Organization-building is something we'll save for another day. As for the writing of newspaper columns, I had a notable one on the college paper - notable indeed, heh - and another one, many years later, on the local tri-county daily, where I was hired by a nice fellow about whom it may fairly be said that he did not, perhaps, quite realize what he was getting. Double heh. And that newspaper column was known as DATELINE SMILEYVILLE.
This ebook shares that same title, and is being written by me in the form of columns because it is a form with which I am comfortable, and also because it is a form I consider to be particularly conducive to the dissemination of information and opinion. So I guess you could say these are 'ebook columns' and I am conducting my 2012 presidential campaign by means of two 'collections' of ebook columns. Of course, it may be that there is no difference whatsoever between an ebook 'column' and an ebook 'chapter,' except in my head. Or maybe I have an ulterior motive and desire to keep the book title in your
