Uncle Barlow Meets Dulcinea and Mitch McConnell

    I got another letter from my Uncle Barlow the other day.  He still lives way out in the country, in Barlow County. He thinks that because I live in the city I have more experience with certain kinds of things, so now and then he writes me to ask for my opinion.
    Lately he's been thinking about culture and politics. Here's what  he had to say.

"Dear Nephew,
    "Well, I just came back from spending the morning with Scooter over at the cafe, and I want to tell you, he's down in the dumps in the worst way.  You see, his wife Ida has got it in her head that she needs to be more cultured.  She has been after him to take her up to Charlotte to see the symphony, and he figured she wasn't going to let it go, so last week up they went.
    "Scooter said the music was mighty pretty, but he just couldn't figure out the method of the thing. He said a fellow in a funeral suit stood in front of the musicians and waved a little stick at them, even though they weren't looking at him, since they had to keep their eyes on the music they were playing. He said the only thing he could dope out was that the fellow must have been some kind of big wheel and they had to let him get up there with the rest of the bunch if he wanted to.  Kind of like when we were boys and Booger Braxton owned the football so we always had to let him play quarterback.
    "But anyhow, that's not what Scooter is down in the dumps about. On the way home in the car Ida started going on about how she didn't like having such a plain name, and she was thinking about starting to call herself Dulcinea. Scooter said he checked around, and that's a name from a story about a fellow who rides around trying to stick a spear in a windmill. So now Scooter is afraid that Ida's butter is beginning to slip off her noodle. He doesn't quite know what to do. He's saying that he read something not long ago about recreational therapy and maybe he will try to get her interested in football.
    "Ordinarily I would have stopped by the library on the way home, but I skipped this time because it's kind of tense over there nowadays. Millie the librarian got mighty cranky when all those Republicans won in the election.  Millie would sooner kiss a snake than smile at a Republican.
    "Well, who should come into the library the very next day but Orlo Babcock?  He owns the tractor dealership out on the bypass.  I guess Orlo got to going on about how the Republicans are going to fix things so the free enterprise system prevails and folks are only rewarded for working hard on their own initiative to get ahead. And I guess Millie said she thought he and his kind are mighty free about recommending bootstraps to people who don't have any boots to begin with. And then he called her a woolly minded liberal do-gooder, and she got to stabbing him in the chest with her finger and calling him a buffoon, which is a touchy thing to say to Orlo Babcock, because it's true.  Well, Orlo used to be on the library board and still has friends there, and Millie is stalking around saying she won't be bullied, and I'm thinking to steer clear of there until things settle down.
    "Now, ordinarily I don't spend much time studying on politicians. I figure those folks are a lot more interested in each other than they are in me. As long as they don't raise the taxes on my land or my liquor I figure I'm pretty much OK. But I have to admit this election does have me puzzled about a couple of  things. The first thing is, how did all those Republicans get elected? I mean, near as I can tell, they didn't say much of anything except that they really didn't like President Obama, who's not going to be around much longer in any case.
    "It kind of put me in mind of when that fellow Nixon was running for president and said he had a plan for ending the Vietnam war, but it had to be a secret, but he wanted people to vote for it anyway.  Well of course he went right on and got elected, which proved I guess that voters sometimes will actually buy a pig in a poke, and now by golly it looks like they've done it again.
    "So, come the new Congress in a little while, the Senate Republicans are going to be led by this fellow Mitch McConnell from Kentucky.  You can recognize him right away if you see his picture in the paper. He's the one who looks kind of like he's not all there. He says he and his bunch are going to end the gridlock in Washington, which may be pretty brassy of him  to brag about, since I hear he was one of the leaders causing it in the first place. It's kind of like somebody asking you to admire them for agreeing to stop hitting you in the head.
    "And that brings me to the rest of what I'm wondering, which is,  now that those Republicans are in control, what are they actually going to do about things?  They can't go on just giving President Obama the dickens.  Well, I guess they could, but I mean they've already made it plain they think he's worse than your ex-wife's second husband.  What's the point? And what does that have to do with the work they are supposed to get on with themselves?
    "The Widow Cumbee says I should try to look at things in a positive way. She says we should all try to see it kind of like we'd been given a mystery gift for Christmas.  But I can't get very far with that, because I'm kind of nervous that maybe the people who got together to give us the gift don't know what's in the box, either, but we're all going to have to live with whatever pops out.
    "The widow Cumbee says I'm just a worrywart. I sure would like to know what you think about all this, nephew. And in the meantime I hope you keep well.

                                                                                  "Sincerely,
                                                                                  "Your Uncle Barlow."