Velociworld

Dancing with the Devil

Enough politics. The beach ball is nicely balanced upon the barking seal's nose, and we shall see which way it ultimately topples. I, for one, intend to drink heavily regardless.

Here's a Senator story for you. Now, several readers have commented over the years that the Senator wasn't real. A figgie-ment of my imagination, or overwrought brain. The suspension of disbelief was too great, the fabric of the narrative was a bit too frayed to elicit more than a wink and a nod. Sure, Velociman. Pecos Bill incarnate, and the stuff of Paul Bunyan you're spinning here.

Would that that were true. Here's a picture of the Senator at his desk, taken the year of my birth:

That would be the Georgia Capitol in the background. Inside the capitol is a bust of the Senator's erstwhile great-great-great uncle, which bust the Senator most assuredly claimed as his own ancestor, said alleged ancestor having run for President once upon a time, only to come in third in a four way race, having had a massive stroke upon the floor of the United States Senate whilst pressing his case for election. He lost to John Quincy Adams, and Andrew Jackson. But he beat that pussy third-way politican Henry Clay, even stroke addled, with saliva streams dripping and eyeballs a rolling. At any rate, I'm sure it never harmed the Senator to rub the pate of that bust every day when the General Assembly was in session.

But to the story, far better than a stroke. This is a young Senator story, too.

After having won a battlefield commission kncoking out Nazi radio shacks in Greenland with an intelligence company, the Senator graduated from Officer Candidate School in Fort Benning, Georgia, in February 1945. Not quite 20, he and a buddy took four days of leave to visit my grandparents in Savannah on his way to his first command, at a German POW camp in Alabama. Being exuberant young men, his buddy rolled their jeep in Savannah, said accident crushing the Senator's ankle. He lay in the hospital for seven months. Through the fall of Germany, and the nuking of Japan. He was ultimately given two years of inactive duty, after which he could resign his commission.

Two years later, after having married, opened a store for his father, and passed the bar, he was informed by letter from the Surgeon General that his X-rays had been re-examined, and the Surgeon General felt he owed the United States Army two more years of active duty.

The Senator, now 22 and feeling his oats, fired off a letter to his Senator, Walter F. George, who along with Richard Russell was one of the old lions of the Senate from Georgia. In this letter he complained bitterly of getting a "raw deal", soldierspeak for a good fucking, and lambasted the Surgeon General as an incompetent ass, and a paper-pushing dolt. He came just shy of calling him a faggot.

Several weeks later the Senator received a letter from Senator George (which letter I possess), stating that he wasn't competent to intercede in the matter, and was therefore forwarding the letter and file to the Surgeon General.

Game, set, match, bitch.

George had thrown him under the bus, and backed over him several times. The Surgeon General gleefuly followed up with triumphant reiteration, and orders soon followed for the Senator to report for duty.

The old man sidestepped the issue by co-founding an Air National Guard squadron, which led him in short order to Tokyo for the duration of the Korean War as a JAG officer. Not exactly summers in Paris, but far from the Chosin Few.

What did the Senator derive from this object lesson? Never trust a fucking politician, even should you become one. Make your own destiny. And drive the goddam jeep yourself.

I need to get that letter framed. It languishes in a folder file. It would be a wonderful reminder, every last day of my life, to beware those who would offer their gratuitous assistance, and to entrust my well-being to no one.