“Did they bring back another bear?”
“Worse!” I leaned closer and looked around the campfire at the other boys, all staring at me. “They all came back carrying beavers!”
At that point the adults exploded in laughter. “Oh, jeez, I haven’t heard that one in years!” commented Bill Baker.
“Beavers!” laughed Al Parker, “Oh, that’s a good one!”
“DAD!” complained Charlie. A few of the other boys complained too, now that they realized they’d been had. We shooed them off to bed and finished off the coffee and tea, swapping other tall tales we’d heard over the years, mostly going back to when we had been boys.
Sunday morning we were out of there as soon as we could rouse the boys and feed them. Since a Scout is Reverent, when we got back to St. James, we hauled their butts inside the church and made them sit through the last half of the service before sending them home. (Marilyn wasn’t too pleased with that, since it wasn’t a Catholic service, but I told her to lump it.) We cleaned up and took naps, or at least I did. Charlie had a lot more energy than his father did!
It was a big difference camping with the Scouts in the Nineties versus camping with the Scouts in the Sixties. Back when I was that age, nobody gave a shit about being sensitive or politically correct. Leaders would sit around the campfire smoking and passing a flask, while sending the kids off into the wilderness to hunt for left-handed monkey wrenches and snipe. Now we had to be nurturing and supportive. We couldn’t allow hazing, booze was forbidden (admittedly, that was probably a good rule), and if you had to smoke, you had to leave the camp area. That led to some silly stuff. I remembered one trip when I still smoked. The Scoutmaster, and all three of us Assistant Scoutmasters left the campfire area one cold winter night to smoke and chat; so half the boys followed us, so they could chat, too. Everybody ended up standing around in the dark snow.
We were lucky on this trip, with no WIAs or KIAs in Pack 116. Nobody got lost, nobody got homesick, nobody cried, nobody got hurt more than scrapes and splinters and bruises. Nobody got eaten by bears. Everybody got filthy. That pretty much made it a good trip for a bunch of nine and ten year old boys! Life is pretty simple at that age.
Chapter 108: Settling In
I was sworn in as a Congressman on January 3rd, 1991, as the 102nd Congress convened.
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.”
Everybody in Congress, all the Representatives and the new third of the Senate, has to take this oath. It dates back to 1884.
Both Brewster and Chuck, my new Chief of Staff, insisted I had to have Marilyn and the kids there for my swearing in. That meant we had to take them out of school for the day. I argued against it, but was told this was not optional. They had to be there!
In most ways, it really is optional. It is nothing but a gigantic photo op. For one thing, all 435 of us are sworn in at one go, in the House. Since no photos are allowed, nobody can see us. So instead they have a bunch of empty rooms with flags and backdrops set up, and photographers. You get called into one of the rooms, with your family and whoever else you want in the photo, and it all gets faked! You could bring in the cast of Sesame Street and be photoed with your right hand raised and your left hand on Grover’s head and it would be totally legit. In fact, donate enough money to the campaign and you can be in the background, smiling as Congressman Needsdough gets sworn in. You don’t even have to be sworn in with your hand on a Bible. There are no laws saying you have to. It can be on a Koran or the Book of Mormon or a set of car keys. I settled for the small King James Version bible I had received as a gift from my godmother after my confirmation. That was back in the days when I still lived at home and Hamilton hadn’t totally gone crazy yet.
We didn’t get silly. We asked Suzie if she wanted to come down with her family for the fun and games. She had a good laugh, but then called us back the next day. John couldn’t take the time off, but he had (foolishly to my way of thinking) agreed to take care of the boys for a couple of days and she flew down. She couldn’t believe we had sent a plane for her, and then I told her she’d have to come down with just her husband one day, and waggled my eyebrows at her. Both she and Marilyn turned bright red and spluttered, which made it money well spent.
We had also asked Harriet and Big Bob to come down, but they were going on a Caribbean cruise, and couldn’t make it. They did, however, accept my offer to have them flown to San Juan, Puerto Rico, so they wouldn’t have to fly commercial. They promised to see us after the trip.
I didn’t invite my parents. After Suzie and I reconnected I prevailed on her to get in touch with dear old Mom and Dad. She was nervous about it, but made calls. Afterwards she called me, crying. Our mother was damning me to no end, and complained that Suzie wasn’t being supportive, and was no better than I was. Dad, on the other hand, would be happy to see her again. She should visit and meet his new girlfriend. He wasn’t overly happy with her getting in touch with me, either, since I had caused so much trouble, even if some of it had been forced on me by Hamilton. What a pair of fucking nut jobs! No, I didn’t need either one of them anywhere near me or my family or the United States Congress.
We were still figuring out the commuting and living thing, and I was still at the L’Enfant Plaza. We had closed on the house on the 30th but our designer wasn’t through with it yet. I wasn’t surprised when the designer Stayman-Huestis had recommended turned out to be a ‘Republican’ designer, the wife of a Senate committee staffer. I had this horrible feeling that by the time she was done with that, the interior decorations would end up costing more that the Hereford house total, including property, pool, and pool house! She had put off the grand unveiling by a week already, and I was sure I was going to need a very strong drink before I went inside.
The commuting-airplane angle was actually working out neatly. I had put Lloyd Jarrett and his partners together with Jake Junior, and they had come up with an interesting plan. Junior had said, we’re in the equity business, so let’s do this as an equity deal. The Buckman Group would come up with the money, partly through sales of my shares, and buy an appropriate sized chunk of Executive Charters. Executive Charters would use this capital investment to purchase a mint condition slightly used Gulfstream IV and a brand new Bell JetRanger III. I would have primary use of them, the Buckman Group would get secondary use, or a substitution of something equivalent, and they would also be available for charitable or mercy flights. That sort of thing was always good as public relations and had a few tax benefits — and it’s simply good citizenship.
Marilyn and the kids came down on Friday night, and we got our first look at the new house, now ready for us to move into. Imagine House Beautiful, only nicer. The designer showed us around, and assured us the price was quite reasonable, that price being somewhere in between “Holy Christ!” and “Oh my God!” The kitchen was the type with the matching $10,000 custom pots-and-pans set hanging from the mahogany rack over the granite island. I used it to make burgers with. I was worried that the gods of décor would shoot lightning down through the roof at us.