head so you cannot stop thinking about it. The one thing I do know for certain is that writing these columns or chapters here, Americans, in this ebook, gives me something I never had for a moment during the years I spent writing those old newspaper columns.
Here, Americans, I have freedom.
__________
There's another thing I hear quite a few of you yammering about, and how should I put it? Oh yes, let's put it like this: you believe I am already totally messing up my presidential campaign. Not enough meat and potatoes. Too much meandering, too much personal anecdote. Too much... freedom.
Well, we've talked it over, the esteemed members of my kitchen cabinet and I. We don't think I have it all wrong. We think I have it all right. Cool, Americans? Still with me, you young pups? Good, good. I'm still with you, too. Let's proceed.
__________
Before Stuart was born, on those evenings when our euchre game was at Quiet and Lotta's house, we played at the kitchen table. After Stuart came along, Lotta relegated us to the basement. Even then, she admonished us to keep our "mayhem to a minimum" and to keep the music down. On the plus side, she continued to keep us well-supplied with munchies both delightful and delectable, just as she'd done when we'd played cards in the kitchen.
We'd been playing for a couple hours or so that night, and Jim's country music station had been on the entire time. The music, combined with the fact that it was one of those rare evenings when Quiet and I had been steadily beating JimJerry at euchre, had put Jerry in a particularly sour disposition. Next thing you know, JimJerry is bickering back and forth across the table about the music.
"Can we puh-leeeeze change the radio station?" asked Jerry. "I know these songs seem to hold meaning for you, Jim, but it's hard for me to get excited about a fellow who leaves his wife for his Ford pickup and the basset hound named Cliff that his daddy (may he rest in peace) gave him when he was just a boy, a dog who is old and on his last stubby legs and the wife doesn't understand but the girlfriend does, and he and the basset stray but in the end he remembers that he is a dad himself because the picture of little Susie in his wallet, that fell out when he was searching for the phone number of Cliff's veterinarian, wrinkled and creased though it may be, reminds him of his daddyhood, and meanwhile the wife has been remembering some things, too, such as that the grass is always greener right at home even if Cliff does yellow it on occasion and in the end they are all back together again except for Cliff, who has gone to that Great Doghouse in the Sky, while the new basset puppy, Little Cliff, licks Susie's tears away... this stuff just isn't working for me, Jim."
JimJerry stared at theirself for a moment before Jim replied. "Well, Jerry, I know you'd rather listen to meaningful songs about killers on roads and squirming toads and yellow submarines... yellow submarines... yellow submarines... and about how first there are mountains but then there aren't mountains but then there are mountains and all that groovy esoteric sort of thing. Yes, Jerry, what I'd not give if only my musical tastes could be so refined as your own."
While JimJerry was arguing back and forth, my cousin, who had no clue he was about to become business manager of Devlin Twins Music, was busy writing on the notepad we use to keep score when we play euchre with JimJerry. Normally in euchre each team keeps score with a pair of fives from the deck, but Quiet and I find that, when playing euchre against JimJerry, a pen and notepad provides for a more accurate tally of JimJerry's points.
"Hey, Jerry." Quiet was staring at the notepad. "What was that part about little Susie's picture in the wallet? All mangled and beat up, or something?"
"Wrinkled and creased," JimJerry replied in stereo.
Well. The next thing I know, the cards and grudges have been set aside, Quiet has provided pens and notepads for all, and JimJerry has his heads together and is turning Jerry's rant into an actual country music song. I contributed the title, and they finished 'The Ballad of Little Cliff' that very night. And danged if they didn't sell it! And ol' Jersey Jefferson sang it and took it to number seven on the charts. JimJerry never looked back. As for me, well, I never did quite get the hang of the songwriting gig, but JimJerry, upon the wise counsel of their business manager, Quiet, pay me a fair stipend for creating song titles. That, it seems, is something for which I do have a certain flair. I came up with the title for the love song that was their first number one hit: 'Tool Shed.' And I also came up with the title of the song that won Devlin Twins Music its very first slew of awards: 'If You Really Loved Me You'd Have Married My Brother.' When the ol' fellow who smokes pot and everyone adores recorded it and it became the title song of his latest platinum album, well, that's when the Devlin twins knew they'd arrived.
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The Devlin twins wanted to create a 'theme song' for my presidential campaign. We at the CDP all agree that it isn't hip, when presidential candidates use songs without payment or permission. We at the CDP also agree, that the odds of an artist with a song we like being willing to see it used to support a conservative presidential candidate are slim and none. So JimJerry went to work. I hated to disappoint them - they created five different theme songs for me to choose from - but none of the songs was doing it for me. Three of them - 'Onward Conservative Constitutionalist Non-belligerent Faith-based Soldiers' and 'The Man from Smileyville' and 'Dogs and Children Love Him, so How Bad Can He Be?' - did not get a second listen. The first was rejected for the myriad of good reasons you Americans can see for yourselves; the second was something out of a 'spaghetti western' and much as I might like to be a cowboy, I understand that I am not one. And to be frank, Americans, that third song kind of creeped me out.
The fourth tune was 'The Ballad of Packy the Mule.' I actually liked the tune and the lyrics were, I guess, fairly tolerable. The republicans have their elephant and the democrats their donkey. We have a pack mule, Packy. He carries a heavy burden. I listened to this one three times before rejecting it. I kept seeing old black-and-white 20-Mule-Team Borax commercials in my head. When the Bright White Light Entertainment Engine is up and running and we create a good ol' western television show in the classic tradition, this would be the tune to have as its intro.
The fifth tune was the best of the bunch but, well, I don't know. I listened to it half a dozen times and never did figure out what bugged me about it, but when the long day was done I'd rejected 'Why Do All the Hotties Love the CDP?' too.
__________
"I don't think you should ask for our opinion, Dad, and then get all bent out of shape when it's not the opinion you want to hear." Daughter Mell. God love her.
"I'm not all bent out of shape!" I turned from Mell to Ellie. "Do I seem all bent out of shape to you?"
"Well." Ellie Belle O'Dell, the woman I love and aim to marry. God love her.
"I just don't think you two get it, is all."
"Dad! I think you are the one who doesn't get it... is your name Harry?"
"Well no, but -"
"Is your last name Truman?"
"Of course not, but -"
"Is this 1948?"
"No! And you are missing the point! Everybody knows that if Harry Truman were alive today - and you know what I mean - the Democratic Party would shun him, would consider him an embarrassment, would probably call for him to be tried for 'war crimes' and 'crimes against humanity.' After all, Harry fought a war and used something stronger than beanbags. But the CDP and the people it seeks to represent hold a different opinion, and revere him as the last great president this nation has had. He was not perfect, not by any means. But he was -
