Deadlines: 1984-85

By T.R. St. George

This is the eighth in a series of nine satiric, comedic novels (The Eddie Devlin Compendium) that follow a gaggle of characters, Edward Temperance Devlin foremost among them, from the Stock Market Crash of 1929 through the Great Depression, World War II, the post-war years, the Kennedy assassination, Watergate, etc. to the Millennium and beyond. Withy illustrations by the author.

Books:

Flacks (1973)
Bringing Chesty Home (1948)
Clyde Strikes Back (1963-64)
Deadlines (1984-85)
Old Tim's Estate (1929-35)
Replevy for a Flute (1956)
The Bloody Wet (1943-44)
The Survivors (1999-2000)
Wildcat Strike (1939)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 25, 2003
• ISBN: 9781465334398

T.R. St. George

T.R. St. George spent 39 months in the Southwest Pacific in World War II, by turn a private and private first class in an Infantry reconnaissance platoon, a corporal and half the staff of a division newspaper and, eventually a sergeant, a reporter for YANK, the weekly Army magazine published around the world.

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Copyright © 2003 by T.R. St. George.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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FOR DIGBY AND EVAN

MUSH (mush or, dialect, moosh.) (1) U.S. meal, esp. corn meal, boiled in water or milk until it forms a thick soft mass. (2) Any thick soft mass. (3) Anything unpleasantly lacking in firmness, force, dignity, etc.

TRIPE (1) The first and second divisions of the stomach of a ruminant, esp. oxen, sheep or goats. (2) Slang: Something, esp. speech or writing, that is false or worthless: rubbish.

This is the eighth in a series of nine satiric novels that follow a gaggle of characters, Edward T. Devlin foremost among them, from the Stock Market Crash of 1929 to the Millennium and beyond. The previous titles, also published by Xlibris, are Old Tim’s Estate (1929-35), Wildcat Strike (1939), The Bloody Wet (1943-44), Bringing Chesty Home (1948), Replevy for a Flute (1956), Clyde Strikes Back (1963-64) and Flacks (1973).

1

The Press Room for what the Governor’s spokesperson, a former local female TV personality, calls the the print media (the newspaper reporters who cover the Minnesota State Capitol, the State Legislature when in session and assorted state offices) is located deep in the Capitol’s sub-basement, twenty feet below the Governor’s offices and, more precisely, directly below the Governor’s private bathroom. In fact, the dead black four-inch cast iron waste pipe connected to this bathroom passes through the print media Press Room, hugging its rear wall, on its way to the sanitary sewer deep in the sandstone beneath the Capitol. And on and off throughout the day when Governor Sven Johnson is so to speak in residence this pipe makes a noise like Niagara Falls, then rumbles and grumbles and gurgles and hisses like a receding tsunami.

The pipe is doing that now, distracting and annoying Peter P. Hohn, Chief Capitol Correspondent for the St. Paul Monitor Union & Standard & Herald, an a.m. p.m. chain newspaper with a claimed but dwindling daily circulation (all editions, home delivery and street sales) of just under 160,000.

Alone in the Press Room at mid-afternoon on this hot late summer day (Tuesday, August 21, 1984), Peter P. Hohn sits humped over a battered cluttered desk set close to the waste pipe, puffing a Camel, his ashtray full of butts, scanning a couple of News Releases a Capitol messenger tossed through the Press Room door. A weary man in his middle fifties with unruly hair turning gray (he needs a haircut) and a growing pot belly, wearing a grubby white shirt, the cuffs rolled, a ratty green tie and baggy seersucker pants, his seersucker coat draped over his desk chair, Peter P. Hohn is a veteran newspaperman, the Monitor Union & Standard & Herald Capitol Reporter for a dozen years and Chief Correspondent for five.

But the goddamn waste pipe, every time it goes off, still annoys and distracts him. It also tells him Governor Sven is back in residence.

Governor Sven. A big bald in his early sixties with a mighty belly (some say he resembles Grover Cleveland) and a shrinking bladder. Every fifteen minutes or so it seems, when in residence, he is in his john, following which the waste pipe roars and rumbles and gurgles and hisses.

Previously, Governor Sven was an outstate knee-jerk Republican state senator for twenty years then for two terms a knee-jerk Republican member of the U.S. House. He soon grew tired of life in Washington, however. He found the nation’s capital expensive and, beset by a fear of flying, hated flying to and from his Southern Minnesota district. So he chose not to run for a third House term, called in his markers, all the favors he’d bestowed over the years on party stalwarts, got himself nominated for governor and in due course elected to a two-year term in 1980. Hanging tight to Ronnie Reagan’s coattails, some feel, though anybody named Johnson (or Olson or Swenson or Larson or Carlson or Peterson) running for office in Minnesota if not actually serving time for buggering little boys or little girls or both or some similar felony can just about bank on 200,000 Scandinavian votes going in. There are after all 49 pages of Johnsons (various spellings) in the Minneapolis residential phone directory.

Re-elected two years ago, Governor Sven despite his fear of flying was out playing Governor earlier today, strapped in a heavy-lift Air National Guard helicopter along with two aides, the former female TV personality, one TV crew, a print media photographer and two print media reporters for the obligatory five-minute chopper flight over farm lands down near the Iowa border still under water following a flash flood late yesterday on the lower Winatchee River brought on by severe local thunderstorms accompanied by high winds and the usual hail the size of golf balls.

Peter P. Hohn skipped that junket. He is not convinced helicopters can fly. He sent instead his present assistant, the Monitor Union & Standard & Herald hotshot new girl reporter, Libby Lipsnitt, now trying out for the Capitol Reporter job.

And where the hell is Libby anyway? If Governor Sven is back in his office, she should be back too. Unless, perhaps, she fell (or was pushed) from the chopper? But that would be an unlikely blessing.

Governor Sven, at any rate, is back. The waste pipe is doing its Niagara Falls act again, then rumbling and grumbling and gurgling and hissing. Peter P. Hohn wonders how Governor Sven, who should see a urologist about his shrinking bladder, managed while aboard the chopper for going on 90 minutes including the five-minute fly-over?

One blessing though, Governor Sven is limited by law to two terms. Come January, following the November general election, he will be seeking other employment. Most likely, the way things work, he will wind up with a juicy state government job. Highway Department commissioner, say, or Fish & Wildlife chief. To that end, before boarding the chopper parked on the Capitol lawn, Governor Sven personally endorsed the Republican gubernatorial candidate thought likely to replace him, veteran State Senator Borg (Beanie) Olson, a chubby little fellow in his mid-fifties from up in the jackpine and sugar beet country, thirty years at the public trough, currently the state Senate majority leader, whose bladder so far as anybody knows is normal. Full-size.

This personal endorsement, though long expected, no more a surprise than Christmas will be and it will be on the local 6 and 10 p.m. TV news shows, will be Peter P. Hohn’s major story today and he ought to be getting at it. His deadline at the a.m. Monitor Union is 6 p.m. But Governor Sven’s endorsement does not inspire him and he dwells instead for a time on the state’s current pre-election political scene. Of which, Peter P. Hohn likes to think, he is an acute trained observer.

Beanie Olson, like numerous other members of the State Legislature, is or was a lawyer who squeaked through the Bar Exam on his third try but found the business of the law beyond him so turned instead to making laws. Like Governor Sven, Beanie, could he choose a form of government, would choose feudalism. He also is the anointed darling of the state Republican Party’s wild-eyed anti-abortion (pro life) right wing and MAMA (Mothers Against Murderous Abortions) gave him a ringing endorsement a month ago. Beanie will confront some token opposition in the form of two maverick (moderate pro-choice) Republicans in the September party primary three weeks hence, but all the polls (well, both the local polls) rate him a shoo-in.

One of those polls when its findings are published in the Monitor Union & Standard & Herald is said to have been conducted by the Monitor Union & Standard & Herald in cooperation with television station KLOT. The other poll when its findings see print in the Minneapolis Times Register Item & Press Enterprise is said to have been conducted by the Times Register Item & Press Enterprise in cooperation with television station WART. In fact, both polls are conducted by Hash & Gange & Associates, a public relations firm with a subsidiary in the demographics business. It’s thought, though, that Hash & Gange & Associates query different valid statistical samples of 350 citizens likely to vote for these polls. With a plus-minus error of 4 percent.

Whatever, once the party primaries are out of the way, Beanie presumably will face (and soundly defeat in the November general election, the early predictions are) Durwood Daniels II, the Democrat-Farmer-Labor (DFL) nominee. Both polls have Durwood II (a lanky fellow in his late forties with a wife, two grown children and a 10-acre spread overlooking Lake Minnetonka) the solid front-runner among five DFL primary candidates. The DFL, a shaky coalition formed in the midst of The Great Depression, is as usual badly splintered.

This is Durwood II’s first whack at getting elected to anything but he has long been active in the DFL (a State Committee member, National Convention delegate, major contributor) and said early on in his campaign that one of the mottoes he lives by is Start at the top. He also is a rare DFL gubernatorial candidate with a $4 million war chest, much of that his own money, which sounds like a lot for a job that pays $90,000 a year plus perks. But of course there’s the prestige too. And Beanie Olson’s war chest is larger, something in excess of $7 million at last report. Most of Beanie’s campaign funds come from those oft-maligned but generous Special Interests: the mining interests, the timber interests, the dairy industry, the trucking and highway construction interests, all of which have had Beanie in their pockets (as the saying goes) for thirty years.

Durwood II’s Special Interest was his illustrious granddaddy, also known as Robber Dan, a shrewd Connecticut Yankee with an eye to the main chance who came west a hundred years ago and soon got into the buying and selling of grain (and grain futures) in half a dozen Midwestern states. Robber Dan, so the legend goes, owned or was leasing more than 700 grain elevators in those states when, pushing 92, he went to The Great Commodities Market in the Sky. Durwood II’s daddy, Durwood Jr., retired now and technically (for tax purposes) an Idaho resident who spends most of his time in Florida, expanded this operation into four more states and two Canadian provinces and took Daniels Commodities Inc. public. Trained managers run DCI now, but Durwood II and his sister Jessica (Mrs. Robert Longwood of Edina, two years older and a rock-solid Republican) hold jointly 51 percent of the common stock and all the non-voting preferred.

Durwood II can afford this race for the governorship but his chances are considered slim. That is the opinion held anyway by the unidentified political observers the Monitor Union & Standard & Herald and other print media often quote. These observers cite three grounds. (1) Durwood Daniels II does not have a lot of name recognition. (2) Those who do recognize the name are mainly retired farmers with long memories convinced Robber Dan and DCI often bilked them over the years (true). And (3), this is the real killer, Durwood II once nominated at the DFL state convention in Duluth in June emulated former Vice President Walter Mondale, a native son and the Democrat now seeking the presidency. Who chose for his running mate (hold your hats, boys!) a woman! U.S. Rep. Geraldine Ferraro (D.-N.Y.). Durwood II chose and somehow managed to get nominated for lieutenant-governor on the DFL state ticket (grab your hats again, boys!) another woman! Mary Margaret Mergenthaler, the Winatchee County Welfare Department director (now on leave to campaign), a single mother in her early forties with a teenage daughter and, the political observers note, a new face on the political scene.

Oh sure, there is a lot of talk these days about Women’s Lib, the Women’s Movement, Equal Opportunities etc. But the world, the political observers feel and have so stated and been quoted as stating, is not quite ready for this yet. Ready for women known to be basically incompetent to govern nevertheless high in the halls of government.

The sensible traditional candidate for lieutenant-governor running with Beanie Olson is John (Sod) Callahan from the Great State of’s far southwestern reaches, a dairy farmer milking 300 head of Holstein and a past-president of the Minnesota Dairy Herd Improvement Association whose daughter Bridget was the MDHIA Miss Butterfat in 1972.

Already, sure they will emerge the victors in their respective party primaries, Beanie and Durwood II have (a) solemnly pledged they will conduct clean campaigns that speak to the issues confronting the Great State of and (b) taken to lambasting each other with TV commercials created and produced by advertising and PR professionals hired for the purpose.

Durwood II’s favorite commercial (created and produced by Long Shaft & Associates, another PR firm) depicts a squat male figure that resembles Beanie emerging from a cave in a ratty fur outfit with a spear in his fist, accompanied by (for the obtuse) a voice-over that likens my opponent to a Neanderthal, which in many ways Beanie is, though many voters seem the think Neanderthals are some kind of club. Like the Elks, Moose, Eagles, Lions, etc.

Beanie’s favorite commercial calls Durwood II a rich dilettante, the worst kind, the dilettante provided by Hash & Gange & Associates. It features the Danny Boy, a 38-foot cabin cruiser said to sleep ten Durwood II got for his 38th birthday moving at high speed on an unidentified body of water, swamping and sinking an ordinary voter in a tiny skiff. Accompanied by (for the stupid) a voice-over belittling my opponent’s alleged concern for the common man.

Both Beanie and Durwood II have filed complaints citing the other’s commercials with the Fair Campaign Practices Commission (MFCPC). But nothing will come of that. The MFCPC is a toothless bureaucracy. The worst it can do is issue findings supporting the allegations(s) and it moves at glacial speed. The general election will be long gone before the MFCPC issues any findings.

The waste pipe, right on schedule, fifteen minutes elapsed, is roaring like Niagara Falls again. Many previous governors thought the waste pipe’s location in the print media Press Room fitting but it’s Governor Sven, a hog buyer by trade for the B&P Meat Packing Co. when many years ago he had a trade, who best sums up this thinking.

Those fucking reporters, Governor Sven likes to tell the males assembled in smoky rooms at Republican conclaves, this always good for a laugh. They allas ust a shit on me. Now I shit on them!

He’s a card all right is Governor Sven, Peter P. Hohn thinks, while the waste pipe rumbles and grumbles and gurgles and hisses, but no great shakes in the governor department. Despite a lot of garble about fiscal responsibility and prudent spending and some welfare cuts and a long bitter battle over special school funding for some goddamn non-white minorities, the Great State of after forty-plus months of Governor Sven’s reign is facing an FY (Fiscal Year) ‘85 deficit (more often called a shortfall) of either $150 million or $1.5 billion or some figure in between, depending on who is telling it. Governor Sven and his sundry appointees, though blaming the DFL and its shaky control of the state House for reckless spending, are holding out for $150 million. The DFL blames Governor Sven and a tax cut his Republican cohorts called tax reform and pushed through when they controlled the Legislature (which chiefly benefits families and individuals with annual incomes in excess of $250,000) for this nasty fiscal surprise and prefer the $1.5 billion figure. The DFL also cites what it contends to be a general decline in the quality of life (whatever that is) in the Great State of. Both the shortfall and this alleged decline are thought to be juicy campaign issues.

There is in view of the shortfall a lot of gloomy talk about tax and fee increases circulating through the Capitol these days. Peter P. Hohn, delaying for the moment work on his endorsement story, scanning the two News Releases, finds