Early in 1952 I learned American
Morse code and after I finished the 11th grade I signed on as a
telegraph apprentice on the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad at Red
Rock, up near Kansas. I was
sixteen. After hours I helped put up
television antennas. 60 feet high got
you Oklahoma City, and, if you were lucky, Coffeeville, Kansas. In late September we had a rush order for an
antenna on an isolated farmhouse over in Kansas, a tall gaunt house occupied by darkly dressed
people with tall gaunt dogs. When we
finished, the owners invited us to stay for something so important that they had bought a television set and hired us to install the antenna. There among snarling dogs and rabid
Republicans I got to sit silent and watch the slimiest politician of that
generation damn himself, I was confident, by his transparently manipulative Checkers
speech. Keeping silent was easier
because I was sure the more or less straight-shooting Eisenhower would drop him
from the slate.
Today I learn that a politician who had previously trashed 47% of the country really loves 100% of the country.
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