It’s time to say "Amen.

Thursday, November 09, 2000

It’s time to say "Amen. It’s over."

To heck with saying grace or Grace. I’m just glad the 2000 election is over.

Sorry, Al Gore. You didn’t get my vote.

That’s because I got one too many automated "Hello. Please hold for an important message from Al Gore" telephone calls.

It came last Sunday morning at 8:30 a.m., while I was getting ready to go to church to pray for forgiveness for the Mower County Board of Commissioners.

A political call on Sunday morning … come on, Al, that ain’t right.

I got another one from the George W. Bush people Sunday night and hung up on them in the middle of a recorded message.

This election got a little too frenetic for me.

Too many phone calls, too many brochures left in my mail box, too many door-hanger sacks of political literature.

It got so bad, I took a call from a fellow who said he was from some disabled veterans’ organization – I’m not lying – and selling household cleaning items over the telephone.

He talked so fast that I couldn’t get a word in edge-wise and ended up buying a three-month supply of 15-gallon household garbage bags.

If they come with pictures of Al Gore or George W. Bush on the side, I’ll know what to do with them: dump all the campaign literature I’ve collected in them.

How can something so good and so necessary like a democracy come down to this?

Television and radio ads slamming each other. Good grief, Sen. Rod Grams trotted out his mother to plea for her son’s re-election.

The Mary Rieder people purposely mispronounced Congressman Gil Gutknecht’s name … gut-knecht instead of Goot-knecht.

Those Grace Schwab radio ads came fast and furious and too early in the morning for me.

Personally, I didn’t want to know where Rob Leighton was despite radio ads asking the question.

It was enough to make me want to run for public office.

A few people still remember when I launched a campaign – or was it a threat? – to run for Mower County sheriff.

It caused all sorts of trouble. Poor old Rocky Schammel forgot to get certified as a peace officer and missed his chance to unseat Barry J. Simonson and when former County Sheriff Wayne P. Goodnature purposely stayed out of the race to avoid being defeated by Yours Truly and the fellow who won the race, Sheriff Simonson turned over a new leaf immediately and started being nice to me.

He even made me a junior deputy and I proudly carry his official sticker badge in my billfold just in case my services are needed on the mean streets of Taopi.

Personally, that Mower County Board of Commissioners looks sweet to me – $17,000 a year, $35 per diem, mileage and your own name plate in the commissioners’ meeting room.

All I would need is a platform and I know one plank would be this: no fund-raising by kids.

Every kid is cute. It’s a fact. So, right there they have an advantage that makes it hard to say "no" when they are standing on your doorstep selling cost-way-more magazine subscriptions, Christmas cards, candy, popcorn and other items nobody needs.

I say pay the school district up-front an extra $20 or so just to keep those kids in school and off the doorstep.

And, I know what to do with the – I think it has grown to $400 billion by now – Mower County reserves.

Give it back to the taxpayers. That’s what I would do.

Oh, sure, you will want to keep $30-million or $40 million for the next courthouse renovation project or when those pesky Fair Board and Historical Society people come up with another wild and crazy scheme, but basically, there’s enough money to give back to the people of Mower County.

I would hold office hours at the American Legion Hall in Adams every chicken fry Saturday night and hand out silver dollars until Fred Harvey and the boys have served the last hungry customer.

Think about it and check with me two years from now.