Whoppers, Bedfellows and the Fate of the Nation

    I got a letter from my Uncle Barlow the other day. At least I think he's my uncle in some distant way. I've never been completely clear on that.  Every time I ask the people in my family who are old enough to know, they just chuckle or change the subject. He's a pretty good old gentleman, though, and he's fond of me, so he writes now and then to discuss what he calls the passing parade of life.  He has a particular kind of view of it from his home way out there in Barlow County.
    Here's what he had to say:
    "Dear Nephew,
    "Well, things are pretty slow hereabouts, if you don't count the fact that Scooter over at the cafe is in trouble again with his wife Ida. She's been after him to take her up to the city to hear the symphony.  Well, Scooter told Floyd over at the grain elevator and hardware store that he would just about as soon listen to a bull farting through a bugle.  Trouble was, Scooter didn't know that Ida was in the next aisle shopping for canning jars. She heard every word.
    "That was when Scooter made his second mistake.  He told Ida he was just making a little joke. Now, Ida is mighty fond of her point of view.  If she's real serious about something, she wants you to be, too, and she's ready to explain why. She jumped all over Scooter in the worst way. Been giving him down the country for more than a week. He's going around town looking droopy as a wet dog.
    "I got to thinking that Ida is a little like some of these politicians we've got going around nowadays.  I mean the ones that want all of us  to have personal opinions just like theirs, and who want laws to make it look like we did even if we don't. There was a bunch of that sort flocked together at that Republican National Convention down in Florida. You'd have thought some of them were handing down heavenly pronouncements, except for the fact that a fair amount of what they had to say wasn't really true.
    "I guess the hands-down leader in that department was this fellow Ryan who wants to be vice president.  Millie over at the library says he's the kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree and stand on the stump to make a speech about conservation. You'd think he'd be pretty good with the whoppers  by now, seeing as how he's been telling them in a pretty regular way for several years. But darned if he didn't tell one interviewer that he had run one of those marathon races a whole lot faster than he actually did. It's a little thing, I guess, but it's mighty odd. I mean,  if you were setting out to lie in public, why would you choose a thing where other people were timing with  stopwatches and writing down results? Millie says Ryan acts like he's got livermush for brains.
    "Well, then, along came the Democrats with their own show, and I felt like I ought to watch it, too. They sure did put on a humdinger. I guess maybe a little more of what they said was actually true, although to make proper sense of some of the numbers they were throwing around, you kind of had to close one eye and squint at them sideways.  I have never understood why politicians need to get into tall tales when they want to criticize each other. The truth is usually bad enough.
    "I noticed some movie actors hanging around both the conventions.  And I guess that makes a certain kind of sense, seeing as how politicians and actors are in similar lines of work. But it can sure make for some strange sets of bedfellows. When the Republicans chose an actor they wanted to put up at the podium, they went with that Eastwood gent who got his big break making cut-rate westerns in Spain. I thought Republicans were touchy about that whole outsourcing business, but maybe not so much.
    "I favor the Democrat bunch this year. I have pretty much decided that.  They don't remind me of the Peabodys like the Republicans do.
    "When I was a boy, the Peabodys lived in a big house on the swell side of town. If the Peabody boys didn't want to be completely alone, they had to hang around with the rest of us from time to time. (Although they would never let girls into their tree house.)  But they always acted like they were doing us a favor with their company.  Every now and then you would catch one of them looking at you like you had cow flop on your shoes.
    "And none of the parents liked to go out to eat with old man Peabody. He always found a way to wiggle out of helping with the tip. He kind of acted like it was everybody else's obligation to help him hang onto as much money as he could.
    "The Peabodys were big churchgoers, which I guess is a fine thing for people to do if they want to. But the Peabodys acted like their church was the only proper one, and they could be mighty pushy about it. One time they tried to get the county board to pass a law closing the Bijou movie theater on Sunday, because their church didn't favor what they called worldly entertainment on the Sabbath.  Well, then old Ben Levine said if they were going to start passing Sabbath laws he might have some different notions to offer, and the whole thing got bogged down and finally just went away.
    "My daddy didn't like the Peabodys one bit, but mostly I just felt sorry for them.  They always seemed to be real troubled that everybody in Barlow County didn't think just the same way they did.
    "I have to go now. I'm going to drop over to the cafe and see if I can't cheer Scooter up a little bit.  His cooking goes straight to the dogs when he's on the outs with Ida, and some folks are starting to talk about taking their lunch trade to the Burger Boy out on the bypass.
    "I promise to write again real soon.
                                                                                                   " Sincerely,
                                                                                                    "Your Uncle Barlow"