March – 2004 – TALESetc.

So far winter hasn’t been too bad to any of us in the New England area. We have enjoyed record spring-like temperatures and the concept of pulling out my snow blower once a week is a memory of last year.

Sure it has rained a lot but as long as what comes from the sky can go down the drain on the same day I am not complaining. The one aggravating thing I did experience this winter is surviving the winds even though they could be so much worse by reducing their temperatures by 30 degrees.

The other day as I was driving into my driveway I noticed my recycling bins were not where they were supposed to be. The night before I placed the loaded bins at the end of my driveway. I’ve done this ever since the recycling program began. On this particular occasion they were loaded because most of the neighborhood decided to suffer through the Patriots loss in front of my TV. This is never a problem except for the fact my recycling materials quadruples before the first half ends.

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Ican still remember that cold and sunny January day many years ago when I drove through Washington D.C. with my wife and young daughter, on our way to Atlanta. We saw a large crowd of people gathered in front of the Capitol building and I knew what was going on and I didn’t like it at all.

A B-movie actor named Ronald Reagan had just stolen the white house from Jimmy Carter and the Democrats. My country was going through tough times with massive unemployment, a national malaise caused by the Iran hostage crisis and an ever-growing despair that we had been defeated in a war that took tens of thousands of American lives and emotionally crippled an entire generation. I wondered how an actor was going to make things better? Hell, this particular actor was known to be so incompetent that people laughed openly at him. Who could have known that this would turn out to be his greatest strength – that he could laugh at himself too?

During the early 1980’s my opinion of this supposedly new style Republican was unshakeable. The nation continued to suffer through one of the worse recessions since the Great Depression. Everybody seemed to be out of work. Interest rates broke through the 20% barrier and, since I owned a business at this time, I knew I was destined for failure because of this Hollywood buffoon called Ronald Reagan. Every time he addressed the nation I would sit in front of my television set knowing his policies were leading my nation toward calamity.

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March 2004

Barely surviving the winds of winter.

Ronald Reagan, the man you hated to love.