Dateline Smileyville. Markus Jr. Pell
There is, of course, a plus side. You'll recall my saying that, when I invited them to join my IMM, I told each in turn the specific help I sought; the assistance I asked of Lincoln differed from that requested of Twain, and what I sought from Dickens involved yet another aspect of my 'projects.' When each accepted my invitation, he agreed to do all he could to assist me as requested. And each has been as good as gold, Americans, and then some. Not speedy, necessarily, but very, very good.
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I mentioned that I did, at a later date, invite a fourth person to join my IMM. He should have been the first person I invited, but I was too ashamed to do so. It all goes back to September of 1964, when I had just turned six and started first grade. On this particular day I was home sick; allergies and other things regularly got the better of me when I was a young whippersnapper. I was in the living room, I remember, and I was 'channel wading.' We only had three television channels in those olden days, plus public broadcasting (but PBS did not even have Big Bird yet, and so did not really count), so there was no such thing yet as channel surfing - only channel wading. One of the channels had a weekday morning movie, and I watched the movie playing on that particular morning, but it was unlike any I'd seen before. As I grew older I realized that what I'd actually seen was a documentary, and the subject of the documentary was Harry S Truman. I had only been six years old for a few weeks but, as unlikely as it seems, I was enthralled. By the time noon rolled around and I sat in the kitchen eating lunch, I'd determined three things: I was a member of the Democratic Party; I'd be the President of the United States of America someday, and a great one; and Harry S Truman was my hero.
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My earliest memories are of my mom at night, in the bedroom I shared with my older brother, Waycoololderbro, and my younger brother, Thorninside, reading to us from a 'Children's Bible.' This was in the little three-bedroom ranch house on Crescent Drive that my dad had built a year or two before I was born. My sister, Mouse, is the oldest of us kids, eight years older than myself. She is developmentally disabled yet sharp as a tack, as is true of many if not to say most developmentally disabled people I have had the pleasure to have known. Mouse has blessed us in a thousand ways, and having her as our older sister provided valuable life lessons for her younger brothers, when we were growing up. Waycoololderbro - we'll just call him Waycool - is four years older than I, while Thorninside - let's go ahead and call him Thorn - is only 411 days, two hours and sixteen minutes younger.
Waycool, being older, had a later bedtime, but Mom would read to me and Thorn before 'lights out' every night, from various things; books of nursery rhymes and a marvelous collection of illustrated fairy tales, 'Curious George' books and, God save me from the 'zorbonites' (I already promised more on them later, Americans, but 'later' isn't here just yet), but yes - my mother read us 'Little Black Sambo.' And we loved it. It fired Thorn's and my imagination and we could readily identify with Sambo, which somehow, I think, is not a bad thing. We thought him clever. Anyway, that book was one of our favorites - we used to run around trees in the yard, trying to turn ourselves into butter. And there were picture books about animals, and about the various peoples of the world. And sooner or later, most nights, she'd read us something from that Children's Bible, with its illustrations of a decidedly fantastical bent. So you can see, Americans, that our mom was quietly going about the business of educating us and exercising our young minds, from as far back as I can remember. She raised early and avid readers; all Thorn and I thought we were doing was having great fun.
Naturally I'd long since been reading for myself, by the time Harry Truman came along and grabbed my attention. Mom started loading me up with all sorts of books about the presidency, to go with my regular diet of Dr. Seuss. Within a month of seeing that Truman documentary, I had the presidents memorized, thirty-six of them at that time. And by the following summer, the summer of 1965 and at the ripe old age of not quite seven, I'd made my first run for elected office. I ran for President of the Neighborhood. I won. I made few promises. I kept them. Later on, I found the discarded red plastic frames from a pair of sunglasses; there were no lenses, but they happened to be shaped like Harry Truman's glasses. I wore them on the campaign trail. Somewhere there is a photo still kicking around of my cub scout den - Den Seven - in a group photo, in which I am sporting my 'Harry Truman glasses.' By then I was seven years old. I must've been running for reelection. From first through fourth grades, I'd say I ran for President of the Neighborhood ten or twelve times, usually in the summer, and won 'em all. And I never did make many promises, but always kept the ones I made.
The year I discovered Harry Truman is the year we moved into the house on High Street, which Dad built in a lovely Colonial style, in a wooded area with a very big yard to play in. There are some people in their early fifties today who were kids growing up in that High Street neighborhood back then, who no doubt well remember those campaigns, and my conduct once elected. And so they should - they were the beneficiaries of a presidential administration that successfully pursued its policies: of more and better treats and snacks for the hardworking children of the neighborhood, the Boys and Girls of Summer; of later curfews and bedtimes; of 'special events,' most notably neighborhood cookouts, which were simply a blast.
Of course, as with any president who is not attempting to be a dictator instead of a president, I had to deal with a Congress. There was a House, made up of the moms of the neighborhood. There was a Senate, too; being a more deliberative body, it was made up of the dads. While it was rare that I was able to get everything I wanted for my constituents, I am not so modest as to deny that I tended to have splendid results with the House; if my legislation hit a snag, it was usually to be found in the Senate. But most times the House and Senate would work out some kind of a compromise in 'conference committee' - and my constituents, the Children of Summer, would benefit. And in politics, Americans, half a pie is better than no pie whatsoever.
Mom and Dad were always encouraging me to write a letter to Harry Truman. I never did so, and to this day I do not know why not. I was fourteen when he passed away, and spent many years regretting my failure to write and tell him what he'd meant to me. But this failure did lead me, in an effort not to repeat the offense, to write such a letter to Ray Bradbury. And I am very glad I did so. And yes, there is a moral here for you, Americans. Hmm. While I am thinking about it:
Hey! Al Kaline! Thank you for being my childhood baseball hero and my overall sports hero. There was you, Mr. Kaline - and then there was everybody else. Grace, consistency and quiet class while striving for excellence. For twenty-two years you were a gem in a baseball uniform that sported an Olde English 'D.' It was in later years, while you were telecasting Detroit Tigers games with good ol' George Kell, that I realized you were a gem, period. When I was a boy, Al Kaline, you were one of my several heroes. You still are a hero of mine. It seems I had quite a knack for picking well when it came to picking heroes as a boy. Each of you has stood the test of time. Thank you, Mr. Kaline, for the things you taught me about the importance of teamwork in the striving for excellence. Thank you, sir, for being a hero and not an idol, and for being eminently worthy of emulation.
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I suppose you Americans are wondering why it is that, when I was contemplating my great positive thinking experiment and the creation of my very own Imaginary Master Mind, I failed to invite Harry S Truman. The answer is twofold: partly, of course, I'd spent decades feeling guilty for not sending him a letter similar to the one I just wrote to Al Kaline. Harry Truman had done so much for me, I'd had years to tell him so, and hadn't. And now I was going to ask him to join my IMM and help me out? What if, now that he was, you know - on the other side - he gained a sort of awareness somehow, and had learned of my utter disregard of common courtesy toward him while he yet lived? Worse, what if he'd discovered that instead of passing away on December 26, 1972, he'd have lived until, say, July 27, 1980, if only I'd written that first letter to him but that, since I hadn't done so, the resultant delightful pen pal relationship that would have restored Harry's zest for life failed to occur? What about that, Americans?
The other part of the answer is that, unlike Abe Lincoln, Mark Twain and Charles Dickens, Harry had been alive and had mattered to me as a living being in my own life. The same holds for the other heroes of my youth, Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Somehow it was easier to invite the three I invited, not having known them 'personally,' so to speak. But Harry was the first person