Campaign Thoughts . . .

My dear friends, now that the election is over, I think it’s time to look to the past, to the future, and to think about where we’ve been and about where we want to go. Perhaps it’s fitting that elections happen around Halloween, since they have many similarities – people walking around ringing doorbells, looking to get “candy” in the form of “votes.”

Speaking of candy if I can digress for a moment, don’t you hate it when you go trick or treating and somebody gives you one of those little rolls of Smarties, or a salt water taffy, or some other cheap stuff?

I remember years ago when I was a boy, you could go trick or treating and get a 3 Musketeers as big as a man’s wrist. I’d dress up in my trademark Eddie Munster costume, and collect a bagful of Butterfingers, Baby Ruths, or full Hershey bars. Of course, that was all during Ogden’s “glory days.” But then one day, at Mr. Goodman’s house, I knew it was all beginning to end.

I had spent many a lazy summer afternoon at Mr. G’s place, looking through the health magazines he’d give me. I noticed they were mostly pictures of women, but Mr. G said looking at pictures of both men and women, and learning how our bodies function, is an important part of a man’s heath.

Anyway, one Halloween evening I took my friends over to Mr. G’s house. By this time, we already had our sacks full of Snickers, Sugar Daddys, and the medium sized bags of M&M’s. I had told my friends about Mr. G and all the new worlds he’d opened up to me, and I told them to expect something really good.

So what did he give us? One by one, he dropped one of those tiny little boxes of raisins into each sack. You know the ones – probably no more than a dozen dry, hard raisins in each little red box. Then he looked at me and spread his wide, thin lips, and laughed through his cracked, yellow teeth.

Good times – yes – there had been many. But even then, I could tell my life, and Ogden, were beginning to go downhill.

He took off his glasses as he laughed, and I saw large white patches of dry, pale skin around each eye that I hadn’t noticed before. With his “headlights” and massive row of teeth, he looked like my father’s Cadillac. I didn’t think of Mr. G again until months later, as my dad was pulling in late one night. I was sitting there in the driveway, playing with a flashlight, some insects, and a pair of pliers, and as my father’s car ran over me I remember it was if I could see Mr. G’s face in the headlights and grille, except of course, the Caddie didn’t have nose hairs blowing in and out.

Needless to say, the memory of Mr. G had already started to fade by then, and when my mom got mad that he was still sending me Hallmark cards, I knew the glory days were truly gone.

In later years, for Halloween, I tried dressing up as Lily Munster, as Grandpa Munster, and I even got some legs stilts and did a full Herman one year, but when I never got the jumbo Snickers or even the SweetTarts anymore, I knew that Ogden had started a long, downhill slide. These are the reasons then, why I’ve run for mayor – to spend millions in borrowed money to revitalize the city and return it to the heyday that we all remember from years gone past.

I mentioned Mr. Goodman, and some of you who, like me, grew up around here may remember him. Sadly, I did not have Mr. Goodman’s support in any of my election campaigns, as he passed on in the late 1980’s. I did want to talk about my goals for the next four years, but perhaps I can just take a moment to give Mr. Goodman something of a short eulogy, since he didn’t receive one at his funeral, which I attended.

Strangely for such a generous man – at least, one who shared so much with me – he had few friends his own age. When he died, no one realized it for several days, until a peeping tom noticed there had been little going on in the house for several nights, and called the police.

The cadaver was quickly hauled off to a mortician, who was the father of one of my friends.

His corpse was quickly pickled and interred in the family crypt, but knowing his wishes, I resolved to retrieve his long, gaunt body and give it the sendoff he had always specified. Imagine my surprise when I arrived at the mausoleum, crowbar in hand, and found a rather large collection of his friends – other boys – who had come for the same purpose. Luckily, the gravedigger’s son had a key, and to our surprise, he (in spite of being too young to drive) had arrived driving Mr. Goodman’s car. It was disappointing to find Mr. G’s formerly supple body as stiff as the slab on which he lay, but we bent him at the waist, and respectfully stuffed him into the passenger seat of his 1972 Crown Victoria Brougham.

We arrived at the point of interment, which was one of those little turn-ins near the dam at Pineview Reservoir.

Knowing his time had been near, Mr. G had placed the things he knew that we would need in the trunk of his car. Quietly, we jacked it up and placed the cinderblock under the differential. Reverently placing him in the driver’s seat, with a 2x4 between his legs to hold the gas pedal to the floor, and after attaching a rope to the shift lever, we started the car.

Sadly, the racing of the engine made a spoken eulogy impossible at that time – a pity, for we each had so much we wanted to say. And so, waiting for a break in the traffic that was passing by on the highway, we each said “amen,” then one of us pulled the shift lever into “drive,” and little Johnny Fuchs pushed the car off the cinder block.

Mr. G had always been a Star Trek fan, and we felt he would have been pleased with the massive, twin columns of dirt that rocketed back from the car as her wheels hit the ground, as if blasting from the perfectly paired engines of the USS Enterprise herself.

His Crown Vic headed toward the berm at the edge of the drop off like a retiree headed for a smorgasbord, and when she hit the edge, and then took flight over the lake, every boy sighed.

We hadn’t realized that such things in the movies are carefully engineered events, and when we saw the Vic do a complete somersault in the air before hitting the water face forward, it came as something of a surprise. What I remember most was the sound of breaking glass, but Little Johnny said he swears that Mr. G. came to life and leapt out of the car at the last minute, through the back window.

As we reminisced there at the edge of the lake, we realized that Little Johnny had not experienced the full range of our friend’s gregariousness, having only been offered the health magazines in Mr. G’s living room, but having been yet too young to be taken into the locked guest bedroom that we called, “the vault.” And now, we all knew that since the police had now cordoned off the house, “the vault” was someplace that Little Johnny Fuchs would never go.

And so, if you see me sometime gazing wistfully over the calm waters of Pineview with my hands in my pockets, you will know why. It is in those calm moments when I can almost feel as though my boyhood friend is still with me. And in a way, each time I raise a glass of water to my lips, I feel that that somehow a little of Mr. Goodman is inside each of us.

And now, I see the time has gone and I haven’t talked about my goals for the next four years. Perhaps I can just conclude with this thought. Working together, with a good bank loan office, there’s nothing we can’t do, together.