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When I woke up a little more than four hours after going to bed I looked at the clock and decided that since it was still early dawn I could try to get another hours sleep. It was Saturday after all. I’m sure its getting tiresome for my readers to see me refer to my limited sleep yet again so I’ll mention it along with a promise to myself, if not the readers, to stop mentioning this again as its become a permanent feature of my life. Go to California with friends on a vacation. Sleep four hours a night and use the time while everyone else is sleeping to email, blog make phone calls and strategize. To me, just as amazingly, I no longer take the afternoon naps that were once a regular feature of my life. I might still lie down for ten minutes to compose myself when my head gets full of the details a hundred pressing tasks confuse it with, but I rarely actually wink out. More than likely I’ll shut out the thoughts and be left with the sensation that my heart is beating furiously.
I told a couple people this week that it would almost be a relief if Dr. Dixon just won, could find that last piece of the puzzle which would seal the Red Plan so that I could finally quit. That won’t happen. Just as my sleep patterns have changed for the duration I understand that I can’t bring myself to quit. Yesterday, I was seized with such thoughts several times. Its happened many times before. Two years ago I was afraid something like this might happen. It happened.
And yes, the last paragraph makes this look like I have a personal issue with the Superintendent of Schools. Well, that’s very much the case. But really Dr. Dixon is not a very big part of this for me. He’s a type I’ve not often met before. the first time I ever got a good look at someone with his chief characteristics it was in a very different time and place.
I was working for the Republican Party as a college intern. I’d been hired to drive a painted up van around the state to recruit kids to work in political campaigns. It was 1972 and Richard Nixon was running for reelection. I abhorred Nixon’s policies and was very proud when every voting member of my immediate family voted for George McGovern later that fall. But here I was working for the Republican Party.
I had been going to County Fairs and parking my van and pass out flyers. On this occasion I was in some northern county with a few hours to kill. I had $56 dollars to my name, which for a penurious college kid was plenty until the next paycheck and I was wandering around a very quiet midway.
A barker at one of the booths caught my attention. There was no one else around so he wasn’t in that frantic mode of making harassing comments to all folks passing by to goad one into playing whatever it was he was doing. It turned out to be a gambling game with a complicated table and numbers probably different numbers and dice.
I don’t gamble. I lost a quarter to a junior high kid betting on darts when I was in fifth grade. When my father found out he told me he didn’t want other people to take his money and he didn’t want to take their money. I don’t know if this was the same time he told me, or perhaps my Mother told me, that as newly married couple they too had gone to a small carnival where my Father was engaged by a barker and ended up losing $200. In the early 1950’s that would have been one helluva lot of money.
All these things were on my mind when I went over to talk to the barker. He was genial. We talked a bit and he asked me what I was doing at the carnival. I probably asked him a few questions too. We were just kibitzing. He showed me his game and while the details are lost on me I made sure to tell him that I only had fifty-six bucks on me.
We’d had a pleasant little conversation in the and he said something like, Tell you what. You don’t have to put anything down. I’ll just show you how it works. He then gave me an explanation of his complicated game that reminds me of little kids who invent games and add new rules as they go along to insure that they are always in charge and that they always win. Had I been the kid I was in school listening to a teacher passing on these baffling instructions and asking me if I understood I would simply have nodded yes.
The first non monetary throw of the dice elicited a little cry of wonder from the barker. Why, if I’d just had some money where I told him I wanted the theoretical stuff to go I’d have doubled or quadrupled my money. Wasn’t it a shame I hadn’t done it. How about I just put a buck on it the next time to see what would happen. I smiled to myself thinking of my Dad’s experience and pulled out a buck. Gosh, but it was too bad when the dice roll went as it did but because of the rules of the game I hadn’t really lost the buck yet but I’d have to put another one down in order not to lose the first. But, But, if I had some decent luck with the next dice throw I’d do very well………..and so it went.
Watching the barker strip me of my money with nonsensical patter was a kind of research for me. Unlike my Dad who got conned and kept giving some barker more money in the hopes he would get back what he’d already lost I just watch this friendly fellow take dollar after dollar from me until I had no more dollars yet. At every turn he said the most improbable things about the near certainty of my getting my money back and making a killing in the end. I watched him particularly closely as I made it clear I should really quit because I barely had any money left and because he really appreciated the fix I was now in he had more rules that would almost insure that I’d end up happily.
For those of you reading this you are probably astonished at my forking over perfectly good money, and all I had of it, to this guy. Its just like when I sit in front of a soap opera and see the actors portraying people making the most foolish decision. “Don’t go to bed with him! Can’t you see he’s got another girlfriend in bed in the next room?”
Well, that’s how I was watching this fellow. He lived by conning people – sometimes smart people like my Dad who got caught up emotionally after losing a small stake only to see the damages accumulate to epic proportions. I was a kid. I could call home if I got into a fix. (I wouldn’t call home just because I didn’t have any money of course) I went to college. I was personable. I’d end up just fine. But here in front of me was a personable person who thought nothing of taking the last dollar from a kid because if he didn’t do it he’d be in a fix. Its what he knew how to do. He told people hopeful lies because they needed to believe them. Of course they left disappointed, angry and sometimes dangerous. I’m sure he had to watch his back every day he set out his sham game. Some folks won when others crowding around his booth with more money were eagerly watching.
I’ve only had the unsettling experience of having an adult (junior high kids don’t count) smile at me as cordially and genially as this fellow did one other time. I stopped listing the other lies this latest con artist been spinning because lto reveal such lies you really have to be patient to set it up and explain it much like I have this story. Frankly, I’ve got way too much to do to keep posting these other lies with the care they deserve. Maybe when I start writing my book in earnest I’ll have the time for more of them. I can write pretty fast when I’m not putting out Forrest fires.
Why heck, I had to crank out over 10,000 words in two days to answer that discovery questionnaire the attorneys for the defense threw at me. According to that chart I found on the Internet that’s one seventh the length of a quick summer book and I put that on paper in two days. I’ll post it to the web soon.
Meanwhile, I’ve got a few dozen top priorities to attend to. I’ve got to get the paper work for a bond put together and overnighted to a bond house. I’ve got to explain to some reluctant candidates how they will crush the incumbents in the Fall. I’ve got to write to LDV supporters to tell them that all the huffing and puffing I’ve done to say I’d keep their email addresses private turns out to have been………huffing and puffing. I’ve got to write something to the Trib over their latest, ill informed shilling for the school district’s barker.
When Moloch stood in front of the monitor as I sat down to write something new for lincolndemocrat, instead of shooing him off I put him in my lap and petted a palm full of yellow cat fur off his back. If I’m going to get through this fight with some peace of mind I’ve got to get all the pixie dust I can. Dogs and cats have it too.
