over eighty, but still sharp as a tack, physically
American oil painting , strong, and passionate about his politics. When he said he’d be for me, I knew it meant a lot of votes, as you’ll see. In the county seat of Marshall, I met George Daniel, who ran the local hardware store. George’s younger brother, James, was a student at the law school who gave me one of my first thousand-dollar contributions; his older brother, Charles, was the county’s doctor. I got a lot of laughs out of George’s homespun humor and learned one searing lesson. A Vietnam veteran who’d been away from the county for several years came into his store one day and bought a pistol. He said he wanted to do some target practice. A day later he killed six people. It turned out he had just walked away from Fort Roots, the federal mental-health facility for veterans in
Angel oil painting , North Little Rock, where he’d been for several years, apparently because of trauma from his war experiences. It took George Daniel a long time to get over that. And it was the best argument I ever encountered for the kind of background checks on gun buyers required by the Brady bill, which I finally signed into law in 1993, after nineteen more years of avoidable killings by known felons, stalkers, and people with mental disorders.When Carl and I got back to Fayetteville,
Ballet oil painting,I was higher than a kite. I had always liked one-on-one “retail” politics when I was working for other candidates. Now I really loved going into the little towns, or stopping at country stores, cafés, and filling stations along the road. I was never very good at asking for money, but I liked going into people’s homes and businesses and asking for their votes. Besides, you could never tell when you would meet a colorful character, hear an interesting story, learn something worth knowing, or make a new friend.That first day on the campaign trail would be followed by scores of others just like it. I would set out in the morning from Fayetteville, work as many towns and counties as I could until late at night, then head back home if I had to teach the next day or, if I didn’t, stay with a hospitable Democrat so that I could go on to the next county in the morning.The next Sunday I went back east to finish up the mountain counties. I almost didn’t make it. I had forgotten to fill the tank of my 1970 American Motors Gremlin before the weekend. Because of the gasoline shortage, federal law required filling stations to be closed on Sunday. But I had to get back to the hills. In desperation, I called the president of our local natural-gas company, Charles Scharlau, and asked him if he would let me have a tank of gas from the pump in his equipment yard. He told me to go on
Battle and War oil painting , down there and he’d take care of it. To my astonishment he showed up and filled my gas tank himself. Charles Scharlau single-handedly kept my fledgling campaign going.First I drove to Alpena to see the county Democratic chairman, Bo Forney, whom I had missed on my first stop there. I found his little house with no trouble. There was a pickup truck with a gun rack in the front yard, standard equipment for mountain men. Bo met me at the front door in jeans and a white T-shirt over his ample girth. He was watching TV and didn’t say much as I made my pitch for his support. When I finished, he said that Hammerschmidt needed beating, and that although he would win his hometown of Harrison by a large margin, he thought we could do some good in the rural part of Boone County. Then he gave me the names of some people to see, told me I’d get more votes if I got a haircut, said he’d support me, and went back to his television. I wasn’t sure what to make of Bo until I took a closer look at his pickup on my way back to the car. It had a bumper sticker that said “Don’t Blame Me. I Voted for McGovern.” Later, when I asked Bo about the bumper sticker, he said he didn’t care what the critics said about McGovern, the Democrats were
Boats and Ships oil painting, for the common people and the Republicans weren’t, and that’s all there was to it. When I was President and Bo was in ill health, our mutual friend and fellow yellow-dog Democrat Levi156
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