Archibald's Family Tree

It has been remarked upon that I might not be of pure dachshund heritage. The Electorate is entitled to know a bit more about my background and heritability. I have heard it said that I am not a true weiner and I confess there was a beagle who wandered under our family tree. Now, I do not approve of all this dragging up of old armadillos in the course of a hot campaign, but I want to be sure that the truth is not warped by opponent canines or (dog forbid!) felines. So here is the story.

My grandfather Morse, a handsome and musculositous long and short dog, who came from Cedar Creek, was renowned far and wide for his ability to sometimes outrun cars. One day he ended up in the yard of a beautiful young beagle named Sylvia. They dallied. In due course Sylvia produced 5 long, short and beautiful puppies, one of whom was taken back to the rather posher home of purebred dachshunds down the street where Morse lived. In due course she and Archibald, one of Morse’s legitimate sons, produced Archibald Archibaldovich, our candidate,er, me. Somewhat later our obnoxious sister, Zenobia Archibaldovna, was born. Her mother, Carmen, a beautiful and pure miniature dachshund, disappeared shortly after Zenobia’s birth and so we took her in.

That is the complete story. All the wild scribosities regarding outlaws and worms and animal control officers and shelters are merely intended to dull the shine of A A Blue’s respectible family history. I am a law-abiding, adulterous dog.

Two Speeches

I should have made a speech today, but in the absence of an adoring public at my feet here is what I would have said. Today is the anniversary of Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech in Fulton, Missouri and the other day it was 50 years since Khrushchev’s “Secret Speech.”

I would have said that these two speeches, neither one of which I have read through, determined the course of my life. One was given 2 years before I was born and I was still jumping off docks and yelling “Watch! Watch!” to Mother or Daddy when Churchill spoke in a place not 200 miles from where I was born.

Some years later a high school civics teacher offered a cheap subscription to Soviet Life, the glossy magazine put out by the Soviet embassy or someplace like that. I took up the offer – I loved to send off for things and our Route 2 mailbox was accustomed to receiving packages from exotic and odd correspondents. I read the magazine. I subscribed to other niche publications like Tin and its Uses and I read that too. But Soviet Life was really great. Who would name a park something like The Gorky Park of Culture and Rest? I would have asked.

I would have said that there were smiling collective farmers in Soviet Life and cosmonauts and women scientists. In plain Life there was a cowed population waiting for a midnight knock on the door. What’s going on here? I would have asked. I spent the next 25 years or so figuring that out, till I got bored and switched to Arabic.

I could have been a doctor and saved lives in the developing world. I could have defended the poor and disenfranchised in the courts of America’s Midwest against the wicked wiles of the rich and powerful. I could have written the great American novel. Instead I sat up late nights reading Pravda.

After I’d read enough Pravda, financed by the National Defense Education Act (my reading of it, not Pravda) and put together a plausible dissertation topic I got to go and wander around in the Gorky Park of Culture and Rest myself. You could even ice skate there in the winter, but it was easier to just step outside the big old monster Moscow University building and skate there. Safer too, I guess, at least according to a later report by Martin Cruz Smith.

I would have noted that we all liked Khrushchev. He seemed jolly enough and he really loved Iowa, which is important if you were born in the Tall Corn state. He didn’t really bang his shoe in the United Nations although the world, or a certain part of it, is still arguing about that. He did take it off though. Maybe his feet hurt. Just a couple of years ago I helped out his son with some maps for a new edition of Khrushchev’s memoirs. What a kick to talk to a Khrushchev on the telephone. He’s an American now.

The Cold War was too good to last. Life, even foreign policy, was easy in those days when there was one enemy and they had a country that you could find on a map. People thought you were important if you studied the Soviet Union. Old friends were certain you were a spy. But you were just doing what they said it was important to do: know your enemy. Actually I just wanted to see the Gorky Park of Culture and Rest.

I should have said.

The Hydrant Gap

The fire hydrant question is one of the most serious issues on Elgin’s agenda. There are not enough hydrants, especially on Main Street. I have to go across the street and down towards town before I can get to a hydrant and my rope does not extend that far, so it has to be on specials “walks” that I utilize this essential piece of equipment.

I have investigated the purchase of new equipment and mapped out a proposed fire hydrant coverage map of the city, which is available upon polite request. I recommend the Model 872B which features the permanent blow off assembly with the air/vacuum valve just beneath the service tap. They will of course feature the standard fire hose thread for the odd ancillary work of fire fighters. The Concrete thrust blocking will parallel the service tap and feature a breakaway doohickey. All deviations from this standard shall be approved in advance in the Mayor’s office. As a special perquisite of office there will be a special blue hydrant just outside my abode on South Main Street, which is no more than 15 feet 7 inches from our front steps.

The new Elgin hydrants will be programmed with an automatic annual flush on 4th July for which residents must be prepared.

Weiner Dog Longs to Represent Sausage Capital

The Sausage Capital of Texas needs a weiner dog in a position of prominance. I am that weiner. I would be willing to undertake grueling travel to exotic locations to promote our town and its famous product. (Remember: reduced airfare for canine compartment) A mayor like my humble self will bring in business.

Archibald Throws Collar in Ring

After many thinkifications I have decided to enter my name as a candidate for Mayor of Elgin. As a homeland security expert I representify law and order and cleaning the cats off the streets. The Animal Control Officer will be directly under my controlovision and the City Council will meet weakly over steak and chips. I am still ponderosating out my positions on the other issues of the day and you can look forward to my scribosities here regularly up until the election. I am humbled to offer my wretched self as your leader.

 
 

Archibald here.

My arthritis is getting to me today. Can’t even outrun the stupid chicken. A lazy day peramburolling through the newpapers. I’m sick and tired of all this woofing and warping about the cartoons. What I want to know more about is the Berlepsch's six-wired bird of paradise. That’s news.

Now I’ve spotted a five-wire here in the rear gardens of our humble estate. But a sixer. That’s something. You didn’t know I was a birder, eh? I’ve been into orthography since I was a wee little weiner. But I can’t really crow about it (sorry) because my image will suffer. I’m still available for security duties. Did you see my adversity in the Courier last week? I thought it was pretty attractive: “Experienced guard for better homes” I don’t want any of those pit bull in the back yard sort of places, doncha know.

But I’m plenty employed here in our home place, even if the housekeeper has to carry me up and down the steps occasionally.

The Road to Safaga

I drove this road a lot. It crossed the low dry rocky mountains between Qena and the Red Sea coast. I tooled up the coast road – smooth with little traffic. Unlike the valley road north - with the hustle of donkeys invisible under loads of sugarcane or berseem, three wheelers covered with decals, icons and jangling amulets, foreign trucks driven by horny Turks with pinups in the cab, overloaded buses challenging the speed records, and broken down Citroen’s with stolen antiquities in their trunks. The desert was a relief from the Nile valley.

You wanted to avoid driving the Safaga road at night. The big trucks drove without their lights and only turned them on when they thought there was something they should look at. That would be me in many cases, in my plucky little Suzuki Sidekick, lights ablaze. I would be negotiating a hairpin turn on an unfenced curve with a 500 foot drop-off into the wadi below and suddenly came the dazzle of their headlights.

I don’t understand this practice common all over the Levant. Why? Burnt out headlamps maybe? It’s not as if you save any power by not turning on the lights. Even the baladi clunkers are equipped with bright and dim lights like automobiles everywhere. Arrogant hawaga, I was using my brights and dimming for traffic. The locals were much more likely to simply flash their lights on and off to indicate they were annoyed at me using any lights at all. I would be dazzled and unable to see the edge of that moment’s precipice.

Safaga was a dusty nowhere port down on its luck. The tourists were all in Hurghada. I never paid much attention to it, drove through without stopping. Once we ate baby water buffalo there. In 1991 or 1992 there was a ferry that sank on its way to Safaga from Arabia across the Red Sea. It was the story of the hour on TV and in the Wafd, a newspaper I was then plodding through daily with my battered green paperback Arabic dictionary now sitting on the dictionary shelf here in Texas. That sinking took place at night like this one. Some of the men were still up drinking coffee, maybe having a sheesha. Women and children were in their cabins. Out of some hundreds on the ship one woman was saved. I pictured them swimming in those black tents the women would be wearing. I saw them trying to hold their children. I saw the men clamoring into the lifeboats.

I had been on an Egyptian ferry not long before, crossing the Mediterranean from Latakia to Alexandria. The captain invited me to his cabin. God, they’re all alike, aren’t they? He told me the ship was to be scrapped after this journey. Would I like to join him in Cyprus tomorrow morning? I brought along the Egyptian woman sharing my stateroom which cooled his enthusiasm. She was to crop up in my Levantine life at several odd turning points and she would die in my car on the desert road from Cairo to Alexandria in a couple of years.

This Friday maybe 1000 people drowned in the Red Sea out from Safaga. The newspapers tell us they were Egyptian workers in the rich Saudi economy and returning pilgrims. They don’t know, of course, but that could be predicted. Maybe there was a lone Australian backpacker who had done the hajj and was on a year off from work as a software engineer in Kuala Lumpur. An old man from Esna visiting his new grandchild in Riyadh. A Yemeni accountant, a Syrian anesthesiologist, a writer, a candlestick maker. Lots of women. Lots of children.