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.