I have written several hundred Rants. I will put some of them on this blog. This one is about my experience in running for office in college and for City Council in Baton Rouge. There is something here about Beethovin and a poem.
Friends and Kin:
December 17, 2004 in Clearwater, and it looks like another bluebird day, at about fifty degrees expected to hit 72 later today.
I ran for office in college, getting a lesson in power politics quite early. I belonged to Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity, which was just a bunch of boys (around fifteen) who got together for a meeting in the Field House weekly as we didn’t have a house, and then got drunk on Saturday night together. I started an Onion or Olive club, which justified us in getting dressed up on Saturday afternoons and meeting at a friend’s apartment to drink martinis. There was a very heated discussion when we finally voted on allowing vodka in addition to gin in our martinis, and the ruination and culmination, a crescendo as it were, of the club came after four months of riotous afternoon and evening drunkenness when we allowed girls to attend. Seems our reputation had spread and women were begging to be allowed in, and the drunken crowd spilled over into the street and in the back, that the whole neighborhood complained. The police came and broke it up. So I didn’t belong to any fraternity that had political power, just an excuse to get together and make noise and drink.
Anyway, I ran for Vice President of the Junior class of the College of Commerce at LSU in 1955,and was tromped by Marvin Kaplan of ZBT fraternity. This entitled him to sit on the student council, a powerless group that could vote on such things as bike racks, but never having any other ability than voicing opinions. I learned the power of groups in that election, so I ran for Vice President of the College of Commerce, I knew the president of the College was graduating in January and if I won I would then move to the presidency and sit on the Student Senate during the Spring semester. I couldn’t beat Kaplan for he had all that fraternity power behind him. So I solicited his help in my office and won, and then succeeded him as college president. But as small as our little fraternity was, and even without a fraternity house, it was like a fraternity meeting when the Senate met because TKE had the presidents of the colleges of Commerce, Engineering, Education, Arts and Science, and Agriculture. We were a powerhouse that spring, being able to make noise but not policy and had no effect on anything.
So with this vast experience in hand, I set my target on the US Congress, and began my trek up the line by running for Parish Council in 1971, with intentions of running a close race, then with the tidal wave of noise made in that race, run and win the next seat for House of Representatives and then move on up. Well, that race was the last one because I became somewhat disabused of the political process during that very interesting summer.
Mike Roubique, who worked for Allied Chemical, had run for Council twice and won on the third try. He had a short term of six months or so before he had to run again. I knew he would beat me, because he had Westminister subdivision in his pocket and Village St. George, where he was a wheel in the huge Catholic Church there. Adding those two votes together was enough for him to make it in the first primary, so figured I would run, make a big noise and get beat---then move on to my real objective which was the House.
Wanting to make a showing I walked every street, path, and sidewalk of Ward II, District Three, which was the biggest geographical area of any in the city. Looking at a city map, it took up almost a quarter of the whole pie, extending from Old Hammond Highway on the east to the Parish Lines on the South and the river on the west, almost to LSU. It was huge, and that August was hot. During my dreams at night I walked the streets, knocking on doors, talking to voters.
Mike had done nothing wrong. He hadn’t been in long enough to mess up, so I had to generate ideas. They were trying to put a big regional airport on Hoo Shoo Too road by the Amite River, and of course I opposed it. I said the water was bad. I had little pens made shaped like little claw hammers which little red clawhammer heads that would pull off, saying “Give Sledge A Hammer and He’ll Go To Work for you.” I made up Burma Sledge signs, which I posted all along the roadways. If you remember Burma Shave signs, they were a funny series of signs that rhymed. Then I began to have people call me saying they had big money to back me, because it looked like I was going to win from all of my promotion. That scared me for I really didn’t want the office. I just wanted the publicity for the next election, and poor old Mike was suffering, but we both knew he could win first primary for going in he had enough votes to put him over the top.
So I walked and walked in that sweltering summer. I would knock, a dog inside would immediately hit the door or the window, barking, clawing the panes. This happened all the time. The owner would get the dog and put him in another room before answering the door. Once this huge damn sound came from the other side of the door, and I could hear this beast clawing the other side of the door, howling and barking with it’s big basso buffo voice, telling me he would rend me limb from limb if I didn’t get hell out of there. A tenuous little voice came from the other side of the door telling him to get back and this tiny woman opened the door wide and out past her bounded this huge Sheperd. He leaped upon me, his big paws on my shoulders and his snarling drooling mouth inches from my nose. I froze. I had no doubt that this beast was ready to do me incalculable harm, and I would be reduced to hamburger and that part he didn’t eat would be left on the sidewalk hopefully still pulsing with life but probably maimed for life. He slobbered on my shirt and barked in my face.
She managed to pull him away from me, and when she finally returned she asked in her tremulous little voice, “Are you alright?” I pointed at my moistened dog slobbered shirt, and it looked like I had a jumping frog in my shirt pocket my heart was beating so hard.
Another time I decided to visit a couple of trailers sitting about a hundred yards off Tiger Bend Road, and I parked on the road and walked over a cattle gap down this little dirt path. There were a number of cars parked around the trailers and I had to walk through them. I was greeted by this pretty little dog that looked like a Border Collie. He blocked the way between the cars I had to pass through to get to the trailer. I said hello, and he said “grrr.” I get along with kids and dogs and began to push my way past him and he stood his ground, and said “grrr,” quietly. He emanated a palpable hostility that I first didn’t identify coming from such a small dog, but I then looked down and realized that he was gently placing my leg within his mouth and clamping down with just enough pressure to allow me to reconsider my initial desire to push past. Looking up at me with those eyes rolled up in a bland stare, clamping down on my leg ever harder, he said his “grrr,” in a way that made me understand that he was saying “what part of “grrr” is it that you don’t understand? I understood, feeling as if this little guy just might want some of me so I gently withdrew my leg and he let go. I backed up and realized I was holding my breath. I also realized those votes in that trailer were not worth it.
Talking to a garden club in the morning and a Citizen Council group in the evening often required that I say two different things. One issue of those days was women’s rights, and I had to say one thing to the ladies in the morning and another in the evening to men (who may have been the companion philosophically of the KKK) who wanted no rights for women. It was touch and go, and I realized that a politician had to learn to keep his mouth shut, learn the verbal sidestep tango, and get and keep a big support group that he could rely on as always being there by whatever it took, and then he could be a little secure in his political job. I knew I would be political dog breakfast to any vicious politician who may want some of me in the future, and not desiring to tread such an uneven surface for the rest of my life realized politics, regardless of how fascinating and fun, was not for me as a politician. Then I got a divorce and in those days divorced people were not viable candidates. So that ended my political career.
Recently I have learned that to survive when you swim anywhere near sharks, you must school with enough sharks that they can cover your behind when you are not looking.
Here’s today’s Writer’s Almanac’s poem and a couple of little bios.
Poem: "The Three Kings" by Muriel Spark, from All the Poems of Muriel Spark, © New Directions Publishing, 2004. Reprinted with permission.
The Three Kings
Where do we go from here?
We left our country,
Bore gifts,
Followed a star.
We were questioned.
We answered.
We reached our objective.
We enjoyed the trip.
Then we came back by a different way.
And now the people are demonstrating in the streets.
They say they don't need the Kings any more.
They did very well in our absence.
Everything was all right without us.
They are out on the streets with placards:
Wise Men? What's wise about them?
There are plenty of Wise Men,
And who needs them? -and so on.
Perhaps they will be better off without us,
But where do we go from here?
Literary and Historical Notes:
It was on this day in 1903 that Orville and Wilbur Wright successfully completed the first sustained, power-driven flight, in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The Wright brothers had chosen Kitty Hawk because of its consistently high winds, and had practiced there with gliders in 1900 and 1902. By 1903 they had built an engine that would allow them to fly, and discovered a new method for steering during flight. Each brother flew twice, but it was the final flight, made by Wilbur, that was actually controlled and lasted the longest, fifty-nine seconds. The first flight, made by Orville, lasted twelve seconds and was recorded in a now-famous photograph. The flights were witnessed by four adults and a boy. They were reported only by local newspapers, and much of the reporting was not accurate.
======================================================
Were they the first to fly? I hear there were some Europeans who did it first.
Nobody is sure when Ludwig van Beethoven was born, but he was baptized on this day in Bonn, Germany (1770). He is considered one of the greatest composers of the Western European music tradition. Beethoven's talent revealed itself very early, and Beethoven's father subjected young Beethoven to a brutal regimen in the hopes of profiting from his abilities. As a result, Beethoven ceased formal study in everything except music at age thirteen, but in letters Beethoven stated his admiration for Homer and Plutarch, and his enjoyment of reading.
In 1787, Beethoven first visited Vienna, which was considered the center of the music world. During this visit, he performed for Mozart, who was impressed. He later returned to Vienna permanently and took lessons from Haydn, but Beethoven offended him and the lessons stopped. Beethoven's abilities evolved beyond the need for formal instruction not long after.
Throughout his adult life, Beethoven was supported by the aristocracy in Vienna. They were so impressed by his skills as a pianist and composer that they overlooked his poor manners, famous temper and careless appearance. Beethoven was so successful by the 1790's that he no longer was completely dependent on the aristocracy for financial support.
Beethoven's most productive period as a composer coincided with his deafness, which started in 1801 and became total by 1817. As a result, Beethoven could no longer perform in public. He continued composing, and in 1805 he premiered his Third Symphony, called "Eroica." This symphony broke from nearly all formal conventions of the time, and was originally dedicated to Napoleon. Beethoven considered Napoleon a symbol of the freedom and liberation of mankind, but he changed his views when Napoleon named himself emperor. Beethoven renamed his symphony "Heroic Symphony to celebrate the memory of a great man."
There were two movies about Beethoven I enjoyed. One was Immortal Beloved, with Gary Oldman as Beethoven. It was bad casting, for I know there had to be a better actor to portray this man. After seeing him play a bad guy in a goofy futuristic SF flick I thought of him as being too strange to play a role like this. But The movie was great. And there was another movie, “Beethoven Lives Upstairs,” that was kind of funny, told from the viewpoint of a twelve year old boy who lived downstairs. The kid had learned to play Fur Elise, (spelling) (I can play this pretty good) and Beethoven who could hear then heard it and asked who wrote that piece of trash, and the kid said, “You did.”
Believing as I do in the superman, the implicit faith that man is capable of doing anything, even flying if he can just adjust his wings right and decide to do it, I think we all have innate genius. While I was in college I sometimes got blue, as we all do, and had no philosophical or reliable spiritual source of relief I could find, and I discovered Ralph Waldo Emerson, and would read Self Reliance and Compensation---finding a balance in those little essays that put me over the snags enough to get through another day. He said somewhere, “every man is in some way my superior, and in that I can learn from him.” Since then I have looked for something in everyone I meet that can teach me something. I am amazed at those who have given up looking, having been disappointed with dead end roads and losses so much in life, not realizing their own genius or potential, and that their happiness lies in themselves and not elsewhere. They make their own happiness. That’s easy to say. It seems to be my job to make myself happy and not anyone else’s. They have enough troubles of their own.
Rant has to come to an end. Have a great day.
LDSledge
Comments