Marilyn showed an astonishing degree of cognitive dissonance with our daughters. When I once asked her if she thought they would try the swapping routine with their boyfriends when they got older, I was promptly informed that ‘her’ daughters would be good girls and do nothing of the sort. When I asked Marilyn if she wanted me to tell ‘her’ daughters what their Mom used to do, Marilyn started squawking for me to behave, and besides, she had been a good girl, too, at least until she met me!
I grinned at that, and asked if she thought our son would be a ‘good’ boy.
“Hmmmppphhh! Not hardly! He’s too much like you!”
Charlie wandered in at that point. “How am I like Dad?” he asked. “We don’t look anything alike!” That was true. With his blond hair and stocky build, he looked like Marilyn’s brothers Matthew, John, and Michael.
Marilyn looked down at him, her hands on her hips. “Because you’re just as much trouble as your father!”
Charlie put his fists in the air, like a victory dance, and yelled, “YES!” and then turned to me and said, “Give me five!” I slapped his hand and he ran out of the room, followed by Dum-Dum.
I looked at my wife and said, “Oh, brother!”
“Just remember, you wanted boys!”
“Wait until Holly and Molly start dating. You’ll wish you had boys, too!”
“Never!”
In the spring we put a landing pad out back of the house. This sounds a lot more grandiose than it really was. Lloyd Jarrett and Tyrell Washington figured out what we would need, and passed it on to me and to John Steiner. John took care of arranging the permits, and then we called in a contractor.
However, before we ever got that far, both Lloyd and John told me to go make nice with the neighbors. “Huh?” I commented. I’d never had any problems with them before, and to be fair, didn’t have all that many.
“This is going to play out one of two ways. Either nobody gives a crap, and we have it done in a few months, or one of your neighbors gets a hair up their ass and decides to gum up the works. Wait until you are the billionaire throwing his weight around and buzzing their swimming pool and such. This thing will need FAA, state, and county approvals. Somebody starts bitching, and you’ll get this sometime in the next century,” replied Lloyd.
“That won’t look too good at re-election time, will it?” added John.
I grumbled and rolled my eyes. “So what am I supposed to do?”
“You’re a politician now. Go kiss some ass. I’ll draw up a sheet where you can have your neighbors sign something saying they won’t mind you doing this. It will make it so much simpler. Kiss a few asses in Towson and Annapolis, too,” he said.
I spent the next three weeks visiting my friends and neighbors. To the south of me, on the other side of Mount Carmel Road, the only person there was John Caples, and he was a friend. To the west was a large wooded area that I had bought when we increased security. To the north were some more woods, but on the other side of the hill was a small development that I needed to canvas. To the east was another development, on the other side of a wooded stream. I had to concentrate to the north and east. I also had to promise the State Police and the Baltimore County Police that they could use my pad as an emergency pad, not that I would have ever complained anyway. It took me longer than expected, and cost me a few favors in Annapolis to get everything signed off on, but it promised to be worth it. Fortunately, my upcoming opponent for the election was from Carroll County, and didn’t get to toss his two cents in.
The pad was located about halfway between the house and the woods, and wasn’t anything more than some crushed gravel with a vapor barrier and a heavy layer of asphalt over it, with a wind sock on a pole nearby. We cut a hole in the fence and put in another driveway to the pad, and then a small walkway down to the house. We put some small lights in the pad in case we needed to drop me off after dark. After they painted the white circle with the ‘H’ on it, we were pretty much in business. All we needed to do was to drop me off and let me walk to the house. The LongRanger would then lift off and head to the barn in Westminster. It wouldn’t even need to shut down. We did put a waist high fence around it, but mostly to keep the deer and turkeys from wandering through. And the kids! They found it fascinating, and this was a way to keep them a safe distance away when they heard us landing.
Everybody in the House of Representatives was massively distracted throughout the year because everyone was up for re-election. I suppose the Senate got some work done, but even there a third had to run again. As for the House, forget it! The Democrats were really up shit creek this year. There was a mounting chorus of ‘Throw the rascals out!’ and the vast majority of the rascals were Democrats. Of the 22 Congressmen singled out by the House Ethics Committee for massive overdrafts on their House Bank accounts, 18 were Democrats.
The Post Office scandal was just more fuel on the fire. This wasn’t as fully developed as the Bank scandal, but looked to be even more serious and long lasting. We already had reports of embezzlement and drug use in the Post Office, and criminal charges were swirling around. Again, it all pointed at the Democrats.
A number of Democrats simply decided it wasn’t worth the candle and retired. Quite a few faced primary challenges, and a few even lost, which sent tsunami level shock waves through the House. Most were having to raise huge amounts of money to fight for re-election. Additionally, if you were a Republican incumbent, it worked against your Democratic challenger. That was good for me. Bud Hawley was going to have an uphill battle. He had used most of his money throwing mudpies at Tommy Hoffman. Since Tommy had returned the favor, Brewster McRiley, his designated hitter John Thomas, and I had lots of ammunition to slam him with if necessary.
It might not even be necessary to go negative. Babs and Cheryl had done a sterling job of handling constituent problems (“Yes, Mrs. Joshua, Congressman Buckman really wants to find out why your Social Security check was late, and he told me that he will be talking to the Administrator by the end of the week.”) Add in the passage of the Gulf War Syndrome bill — we had a number of vets coming back to the district who were able to talk about better treatment from the VA hospital or getting a better college benefit package. We had also passed an update to the Civil Rights Act, which was popular in liberal and Democratic Maryland. Finally, we had the free publicity from my attacks on the Democrats in the House. I had been on all three Sunday talk shows as well as the MacNeil Lehrer Hour. Hollywood might say that there’s no such thing as bad publicity, but they don’t say that in Washington! The Democrats were running scared, and it was affecting races across the country.
Marilyn had talked about getting a job now that the kids were in school, but neither of us was all that thrilled about the idea. For one thing, it wasn’t like we needed the money! In fact, you could argue that if Marilyn took a job somewhere, then she was taking a job that somebody else who actually needed to work would be able to get. For another thing, Marilyn wanted to be home long enough to send the kids to school and be home early enough to be there when they got home. What did that leave, the lunch shift at McDonald’s?