Questions

I know I should really feel bad about it, but I missed both of The Democratic Party debates.

For one thing, they came on at 9:00 at night and that is very close to beddie-bye time here at Manis Manor. We have to get up early to milk the cows around here.

I also have no idea what an "Eric Swalwell" is or why that thing called "Eric Swalwell" is running for President.  (It sounds like a side effect from a prescription drug they advertise on TV: "If you develop Eric Swalwell, seek immediate medical attention")

I knew it would be basically Dump On Trump. That's okay,  I guess, but I'd rather watch something else.

Based on news reports after I noticed I was right. But I felt this strange desire to ask these candidates some question, too.

To Bernie Sanders:   We have a friend whose mother lives in New Zealand.  Her mother had to wait 10 months to have Cataract Surgery. Why is this system preferable to the one we have?

To All:  Besides ICE, is there any government department you would like to shut down?

To Kamala Harris:  Do you think we should go back to forced court-ordered busing?  If so, why? If not, why not?

To All:  If elected, would you be the head of The Democratic Party or will you let a 29-year-old bartender continue to set the agenda?

To Elizabeth Warren:  Why should the kid who went to technical school to become a plumber pay for the education of another kid that went to an Ivy League School and majored in Russian Literature?

To Joe Biden:  We've heard a lot about the 25 Amendment and how it could possibly be applied to President Trump.  Wouldn't a President Biden be likely to have the 25th Amendment applied also?

To Amy Klobuchar:  Did you ever pay for the undercoating to rust proof your cars in Minnesota or is that just something they show in the movies?

To Pete Buttigieg:  In 2004,  while running for Senate, Barack Obama said this about same-sex marriage "I’m a Christian. And so, although I try not to have my religious beliefs dominate or determine my political views on this issue, I do believe that tradition, and my religious beliefs say that marriage is something sanctified between a man and a woman.”  Was the President a homophobe in 2004 or was he lying?

To All:   Do you believe that a "wall" or a barrier at the border of this county is immoral?  If so, why?

To All:  Do you believe in free speech, even if you do not agree with what is being said by the speaker?  If so, what, as President, will you do to protect the rights of those who express unpopular opinions on college campuses?

To All:  If a fetus survives an abortion, should the fetus be saved?

To Bill de Blasio:  Really?  You know everybody hates you, right?

I Was There

"They were unkempt, hairy, hedonistic, improvisational, analog, inefficient — anything but neatly calculated and Instagram-ready." - Jon Pareles

"There’s a notion in the minds of some that the 70s were a carefree time, cool and kitschy and fun and innocent, in a peculiar fashion. It was not. For one thing, there was peculiar fashion. For another - well, consider this... a brief against the nostalgia that inevitably attends any bygone time. Every era has its good points and regrettable trends, but for sheer idiocy, ugliness, meretricious music, televised banality and general malaise the 70s are unparalleled.

Trust me on this. I was there"  - James Lilkes

I was there, too. In the 70s. That magical time in which we actually thought wearing "leisure suits" made sense.  If you don't know what leisure suits are, consider yourself #blessed.  Just imagine something Hillary Clinton would wear except it was made for a man.  You had to buy a shirt to go with it. The shirt had to have a collar that was nine miles long.  Some of our dads would buy one but wear a tie with it, which sort of defeated the "leisure" purpose of it.

Technically, the '70s was from 1970 to 1979. But, really, it was much shorter than that. I believe the 70's actually started in 1973, around the time of The Watergate Senate Hearings. It ended on November 4, 1980, the day Ronald Reagan was elected President.

It was the decade that saw The Vietnam War come to an end. It was not so much as we lost Vietnam, it was just the outcome was what it always seemed it would be.

It was the decade we had three Presidents in three years.

The first one, Richard Nixon (stop me if you had heard this before) was a deeply talented and thoughtful politician that thought the truth was as malleable as clay.  The Watergate Scandal was the Mother of All Scandals and frankly dwarfs anything Trump could come up with. Nixon had a Vice President named Spiro Agnew. For real. Agnew had his own scandal dating back from the time he was the governor of Maryland. He resigned so he wouldn't be sent to jail.  Nixon selected Gerald Ford, the House Minority Leader to replace Agnew. Then, about nine months later, Nixon resigned and Ford became President on my 15th birthday.  If you lived through this you know this is a very short summary.

Ford was different from Nixon in many ways, mainly because he appeared to have been born on the planet Earth.  He really wasn't a very good speaker and at times seemed like the President of The Kiwanis rather than President of The United States.  A former All-American center at Michigan, Ford was portrayed as an uncoordinated klutz.  Plus, and this is the truth, he survived two assassination attempts in the same month. The first was by a member of The Manson Family.  That's the way the '70s were. A member of The Manson Family could get close enough to the President of The United States to pull a handgun on him.

Ford was succeeded by Jimmy Carter, who was the former governor of my home state of Georgia. I'm sure it seemed like a good idea at the time. He wasn't truth impaired like Nixon or a klutz like Ford. However, he turned the Bully Pulpit of the Presidency into just a regular Pulpit for Brother Jimmah. He lectured us about energy a lot. He was really concerned about the setting of your thermostat and not so much about lunatic theocrats taking over in Iran. To top everything off, he was attacked by a killer rabbit. This wasn't a "rumor" or an "urban legend". He told the Washington Press corps about the attack. On the record.

It was a time when you could buy a Pet Rock.  Someone brought theirs to school one time.  It was a small stone, in a box.  I'm not sure if you were supposed to name it.

As far as popular music goes, Elton John was the King, at least for a time.  He sang  "Rocketman, something, something, something here alone".  He also sang about Benny of "Benny And The Jets".  Benny (or "Ben-NAY" as Elton pronounced it) had "electric boobs".  No wonder we asked Candy and Ronny if they've seen them yet.

If it wasn't Elton, it was the Eagles. David Bowie was big, but let's face it, David Bowie was a couple of decades too early with his gender-fluid Ziggy Stardust mess.  Chicago (the band, not the city) was big at my high school.  My son once compared them to "The Backstreet Boys".

But the day the music died was when the "Saturday Night Fever" soundtrack came out.  It didn't exactly kill rock music, but it did lasting harm.  By the end of the decade, even Paul McCartney cut a disco song.

The beginning of the decade saw people willing to wait in line to see a movie because, well, you may not ever see it.  I know people that waited three hours to see "The Godfather", which was about Italian business practices.   I waited ninety minutes to see "Billy Jack".   To quote the great Ludlow Porch, Billy Jack was about a peace-loving guy that "loved to kick Republicans".

The biggest movie of the 70s was "Star Wars". You may have heard about it.  I saw "Star Wars" for free because of a bunch of kids from my high school worked at the theatre where it was showing. Yes, I used my connections to see "Star Wars".

In the 70s, you had to carry change around just in case you needed to use a pay phone. Our phone, now this is really wild, were connected to our house and came in one color: black.  If your parents were real tech savvy, they had a phone that had buttons on it.  North Georgia had one area code and I had only one phone number: 971-1904.

Cars were big-big enough to make babies in. Except for cars like "The Pinto" which Ford (the car company-not the President) placed the gas tanks in the back which made them rolling bombs.

The 70s were simply tacky. Over the next couple of months, I'm going to be reliving those thrilling days of yesteryear leading up to my big 60th birthday.  I'm happy to still be stayin' alive.

Try To Go

Two years ago at this time, I was knee-deep in reunion stuff.

If you remember, I was on the 40 year Class Reunion Committee of The Class of 1977 of Wheeler High School (Class Motto:  "Where The Leaders Of Tomorrow Are Looking Out The Windows Of Today").  I  became a part of the committee simply by showing up at the first committee meeting at "Come And Get It" (the actual name of the restaurant we met at).

I know we are not supposed to acknowledge the existence of Woody Allen or that at one time he was very funny, but he once said 80 percent of life is showing up.  That's how I got involved: I showed up.

The reunion was a lot of work and a lot of fun. However, there were some challenges along the way.

The Bad:  We had five class members die in the five months before the reunion. Only one of the class members had been seriously ill before death. Our buddy, Barry Suttle, died suddenly, without warning. Our Homecoming Queen committed suicide.

Additionally, we had two classmates who were in jail. One was not surprising. He seemed like an okay guy, but he also seemed like a guy that would break into your house and take your stereo.  The other guy was a total shock and is scheduled to get out of jail after serving ten years in the fall of 2019.

On top of that, we found out one of our classmates had, um, transitioned genders. The dude became a lady.  We found a picture of her on the internet and she looked like he did 40 years ago except with a rack.

We never found out when all of this change happened. She didn't come to the reunion.

She wasn't the only one.  We had several people that couldn't make it for one reason or another. Most had to do with long-planned vacations or events. Some would come out and tell you that there was nobody they wanted to see and that all the people there were stuck up. (Note:  in 70's lingo, "stuck up" meant people who thought they were better than you)

I'm sorry they felt this way. They missed some fun times.

We had a five-year reunion in 1982. It was at that reunion someone asked me if I had gotten laid yet. My answer:  Well, I live at home with my parents, I'm still in college, I go to Kennesaw, I'm majoring in history, I work at a convenience store, and I drive my dad's 1973 Lime Green Plymouth Scamp my brother's friend Rex Fortenberry nicknamed "The Snot Rod".  You tell me.

By the time the ten-year reunion came around, I was married (Yay!). I remember the band cut loose with "Johnny B Goode" and the whole class was shaking its groove thing. When the song ended, the whole class slowly walked off the floor. That's when I knew we were getting older.

The 20-year reunion had me walking up to the DJ and requesting a song. I walked back to my wife and said, "I've requested a song for you".  The song: "Brick House". I don't remember getting into trouble.

I showed up to the 30-year reunion in my goatee. It made me look older.  I shaved it off.

At each of the above reunions, we had a student speaker. At the 5-year, it was Steve Leary. Steve had hemophilia and died of AIDS due to a toxic transfusion a few years later.  Our class sponsor, Mr. Collier spoke at all of the reunions.  He couldn't attend our 40-year reunion. He has Alzheimer's.

I know everybody's high school experience wasn't the greatest in the world. I know people have moved on with their lives.

My son is having his 10-year reunion this year. I've told him to go. These are the people of your life, like it or not and they are intertwined with your life. They walked the same halls, looked out the same windows, and worried about the same silly things.