The Empire Strikes Back

Tammany Hall is remembered these days as the Evil Empire.  Forgotten now that they watched out for widows and little children, found jobs for working stiffs who wanted them, and were really good at counting votes.  My grandfather would be proud that I can still count votes and sent this sly epistle to the local newspaper concerning a guy who was trying to make life difficult for poor Mexicans who snuck across the border trying to put food on the table for their families.  The so-called King of Arizona put on such a great show he scared everyone and seemed invincible.

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Arizona Republic - November 5, 2010

The votes are in and as of Thursday, the tallies are:

• Sen. John McCain (my favorite war hero) - 794,939.

• Gov. Jan Brewer (courageous stand on sales-tax increase for schools) - 750,644.

• Secretary of State Ken Bennett (nice guy) - 768,108.
• Attorney General-to-be Tom Horne (lots of degrees from Harvard) - 695,957.
• Treasurer-to-be Doug Ducey (voters give ice-cream guy keys to Arizona candy store) - 685,872.

And the winner in the race for most powerful Arizona politician is:

State Sen. Russell Pearce, with 12,676 votes (about half of what he got two years ago).

You figure.

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Somebody got the message and Russell Pearce lost a recall election 11/8/2011.  He got beat again in the regular election in 2012.

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My neighbor, a Holy Cross grad of the female persuasion, asked me if I wasn't afraid of Pearce and his thugs.  Pearce's thug leader would dress up in a Nazi helmet and flack jacket when he'd lead his tiny band out to patrol the Mexico border.  The helmet was too small for the head on his very rotund body and the guy ended up looking like the cartoon character Hagar the Horrible.  I told my neighbor "no."   He should be afraid of me... and if not me then my "uncle" Louie "The Greek" back in Long Beach.   The scene is completely fictional in the Godfather where Sonny gets gunned down at a toll booth on the causeway to Long Beach where my grandmother had her summer home.   Long Beach was where the Dons' families lived.   It was a demilitarized zone, and fashionable summer retreat in its day.

Bill O'Reilly: Goalie

My senior year of high school ice hockey was played in a rage, scoring goals, knocking people down, knocking people out, fights.  One day my brother told me, "They're all afraid of you."   This came as a complete shock because for the prior three years I'd been the skinny kid who was afraid of just about everyone.  I'd always played as hard as I could.  Now the results were different.

The fights became legendary.  Decades later people were still asking our cousins if they were related to us and then telling the story about the night my little brother took on the entire Long Beach High team and I had to rescue him.

Bill O'Reilly of Fox TV fame was our goalie.  He got there by chance.  Our starting and only goalie came down with hepatitis and was out for the season.  Our league was only a few years removed from sending Joe Mullen to Boston College and the NHL.  Who wanted to be goalie?  Do slap shots cause hepatitis?  O'Reilly volunteered.   It was a good move for him since he did not skate well (that's a generous way of putting it).  He traded getting hit by blistering slap shots for playing time.

O'Reilly was non-stop talk (maybe it helped him not think about getting hit with slap shots).  Most of it was annoying.  Finally I'd had enough.  I turned around, skated over to him and hit him as hard as I could in the pads with my stick.  "Next time I'm aiming higher."  He was a lot quieter after that. 

I spend most of my time now playing tennis with my daughter and working with my son on his two-seam fastball, change-up and quadratic equations.  He was wants to be a major league baseball player.  I ask him what his backup plan is, hoping he'll say engineer of some kind.  But nooo... the backup plan is ESPN.  That might be a realistic possibility.  He talks non-stop and is often annoying.