A Family Tradition, Sort Of...

My family has a history, of sorts, with a few Vice Presidents of the United States. Well, three of them, so far.

This dates back to my youth when I was detailed (along with a number of my classmates) to help fill the crowd at a speech over at the local junior high school. The town fathers (very few ladies in politics when I was nobbut a lad) didn't want to embarrass our wee town with a low turnout for the august personage of the Vice President of the United States. Which at the time was a Mr. Hubert H. Humphrey. I think he might have been running for President at the time. (Yup, 1968. I was a sophomore in high school. While I grew my humor remained sophomoric, I tell you that in the interests of full disclosure. Besides which I wanted to use the word sophomoric after mentioning that I was a sophomore. Kind of proves my point, doesn't it?)

Anyhoo, I came away from that speech with a number of impressions...

1. I thought that Mr. Humphrey was one of the most boring speakers on the planet. Perhaps the most boring speaker in history. I have had that supposition proven false on a number of occasions since then. (Most of those boring speakers were generals.)
2. I thought the speech was agonizingly long. Since that day I've had a few speeches tie that one for length of speechifying. Though on most of those occasions it was a "team effort," i.e. more than one speaker.
3. I think that speech is where I developed my distaste for politics and politicians. Not that Mr. Humphrey was a bad man, he was just so, I don't know, political?

That was my tribe's first Vice Presidential encounter. (That I am aware of.)

The second and third Vice Presidential encounters were during the Reagan administration. My own encounter with Vice President Bush was fleeting and only in passing. I had to sit in traffic, trying to get home from work, for over an hour. This was at Lowry AFB in Denver. I saw the Vice Presidential motorcade from a distance, and could just make out Mr. and Mrs. Bush in the back of the car. They were not waving at all the stalled motorists. To give the man credit it wasn't his fault that we had to wait for him to pass through. The security of an air force base was considered somewhat better than going through Denver itself.

The third encounter with Vice President Bush didn't involve me, but involved my Mom and Dad. My parents often vacationed in Maine, around Wells. They even had their own place in that lovely town for a few years. You might remember (or not) that the Bush family has a "compound" just up the coast from Wells outside the town of Kennebunkport.

Now one of my parents' favorite restaurants in Wells was frequented by a number of celebrities and at least one Vice President. One day, while talking on the phone with my Mom, she mentioned that they had had lunch at Lord's Seafood and that the Vice President and Mrs. Bush had also been having lunch there. As was Waylon Jennings. (No, he wasn't a Vice President, but a really good country and western singer).

As I was "oohing and aahing" over this celebrity encounter, my Dad yelled in the background, "Hey son! I got to use the same urinal as Vice President Bush!" Very proud he was, and my daughter, The Nuke, mentioned that in passing last night.

Why, you might ask, might a daughter mention to her father a really goofy comment once made by her paternal grandfather? Well, yesterday was the anniversary of my Dad's passing, which she commented upon, after she had mentioned someone she had the chance to say "Hello" to in the pursuit of her duties in the nation's capital.

Her duties sometimes take her to the White House to brief certain staffers who then, I reckon, pass that information along to their superiors. All that aside, she and three of her co-workers were walking outside of the White House, returning to their vehicle to go back to their offices I suppose, when who should appear but the Vice President hisself, Mr. Mike Pence.

My daughter's co-workers were all rather shy and reticent but my daughter, a chip off the old block(head) herself, smiled brightly at the nation's second-in-command. He smiled back, so she followed up the smile with, "Hello, how are you today Sir?"

He offered in return, "Hi, isn't it a beautiful day today?"

As it was, The Nuke concurred and everyone else at that point (save one) offered up their own somewhat belated greetings to the Vice President of the United States. He returned the greetings and continued on his way.

When the others questioned the silent one as to his silence, he could only reply that his wife would probably get mad at him for talking to the Vice President.

I asked The Nuke, after she had relayed that tidbit, "So what, is the guy's wife a liberal? I mean like a raging liberal?"

She replied, "Oh yeah. Big time."

So, the tradition of Vice Presidential encounters pass unto the next generation.

Yup, hobnobbing with the powerful and famous, it's what we do.