14 July 2009
 
Donks

(Neon Donks Marquee)

The theater is about halfway between Moon and Hudgins, which is about the way I felt. I was in the back of the Outback, along for the ride in the full darkness of the Middle Neck of Virginia.
 
I confess I was a bit drowsy from the length of the day, and the hurtle down the big concrete ribbon from Arlington that has replaced the old water highways of the region. There was plenty to think about and my head was muddled.
 
I had talked to a senior government official, not a political, who told me something that troubled me, vaguely, like rumors of a Latin coup. The official is not in my line of work, but a fellow traveler in the long gray river of the bureaucracy. Something had come across the desk for comment that week. It was not a trial balloon yet, much less an Executive Branch position.
 
It was just a paper discussing the repeal of the 22rd Amendment, specifically in regard to House Resolution 5, introduced by Rep. José Serrano (D-NY 16).
 
I had to be a little sheepish, since I don’t pay much attention to the Constitutional Amendments after the 13th, which outlawed slavery. Senator John Brooks Henderson of Missouri introduced it in 1865, and his country house was spitting distance from my home at Big Pink.
 
“What is the 22nd?” I asked. “I forget.”
 
The official said it was the one that took care of FDR’s predilection for ignoring the tradition started by George Washington that Presidents only serve two terms in office.
 
“They are proposing that a President of the United States could serve as long as they wanted?” I asked, a little stunned. “Are we going to be a Banana Republic?”
 
The official shrugged. “This sort of thing is introduced all the time and it never gets out of Committee. Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader introduced a similar bill in 1989.”
 
“But shoot, isn’t that what made the Honduran military remove Manuel Zelaya last month? Didn’t he want to draft a new constitution and stay in power forever?”
 
“It is funny, isn’t it?” said the official. “A guy tries to pull a Hugo Chavez, and the supreme court of the country asks the military to intervene to save democracy and we wind up on the same side as Hugo Chavez, who removed term limits and has installed himself as President for Life.”
 
“So the story is inside out, right?”
 
“Maybe. It is curious, though. I don’t think there is any relation to that, except to remember that courts and national assemblies have to exist in a precise relationship with the executive branch.”
 
“I imagine the Red States are going to freak out when the word gets out,” I said.
 
“I doubt it,” said the official. “There is too much going on, and unless someone decided to precipitate another crisis on top of what we have already, this will die just like is always does.”
 
I nodded slowly. “There was a congressman down here in Tidewter that introduced a bill every new session to prohibit the Navy from having ships repaired outside the US. It was his way of making the Newport News Shipyard happy. The Navy would have had to send us back from Japan to do maintenance on the Midway.”
 
“Just because it is not going to happen doesn't mean you don't have to watch those fools every second.” That thought echoed with me in the darkness as the little houses flashed by under their security lights. Supreme Courts and recessions, imperatives to act. The All Star Game and men on the moon, forty years ago this week.

There are those out there who say it never happened. The whole thing was a fraud concocted by Nixon. Buzz Aldren once hit a man in the nose who jumped him waving a bible and asking him to confess that he and Neil never went.

The courts- not the Supreme one- declined to prosecute.

It was 22 miles from Kilmarnock to Donk’s Theater, as the crow flies, and of course we had to take the bridge over the Rappahannock, which at that end of the peninsula is as wide as the Mississippi.

My pal in the driver’s seat turned and said: “Ready for an evening of down-home-hootin'-hollerin'-toe-tappin'-hand-clappin' fun?”
 
I swallowed nervously. We were entering a sleepy little village and I could see he neon sign looming ahead. Tomorrow I am going to lasso you, pardner, and take you right inside Donk's--Virginia's own Lil Ole Opry.
 
Copyright 2009 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com