Don't Start the Revolution Without Me! - Jesse Ventura [11]
“I ought to,” I said coolly. “He’s my older brother.”
Well, it turned out that she hated Graham. For being the villainous sort, always strutting around the ring and bragging to the crowd. Terry had started watching wrestling on TV with her dad, and still tuned in on Saturday nights before she went out. She gave me her work number and I called the next day to ask her on a date. I took her to a neighborhood bar called the Schooner. We hadn’t been there long when several cops came bursting through the door, yanked a fellow off a bar stool, and beat the crap out of him when he resisted. Nevertheless, Terry agreed to go out a second time. We went to the movies, my choice being Charles Bronson in Death Wish.
I guess she saw something beyond my macho exterior. A quality, she once told me, that she found soft, even sweet. Plus she had a terrific sense of humor. And I can be a pretty amusing fellow. Before long, I was taking Teresa Masters around to the gym to meet the guys.
TERRY: There was no doubt in my mind, after two weeks of knowing him, that I was absolutely, totally infatuated. I thought about him all the time; he was like nobody I had ever met before in my life. He had a vision and he had drive—such charisma. I got so scared, I tried to break up with him. I said, why don’t we also date other people. He said, nope, this is a one-way street, you’re either on it or you’re not.
We’d been dating for nine months when we got married, three days after my twenty-fourth birthday in July 1975. She was nineteen. And the best thing that ever happened to me.
November 3, 1998. Election night. Not all that long ago, but it seems like another lifetime. My family and I were driving down to Canterbury Park, a racetrack where we’d planned to hold our postelection party. I’d kept rising in the polls. That last weekend, the media had begun calling it a three-way horse race for the governorship. I knew I’d need some luck, that everything was going to have to fall into place. But I’d never doubted whether I could win. Otherwise, I would never have run in the first place.
The sun goes down early in November and the moon was very bright that night, with a fuzzy, broad ring around it like you see in Minnesota sometimes before it snows. There were several feathery ribbons of northern lights emanating from it, which drew our attention. I will never forget my son, Tyrel, suddenly saying from the back seat, very quietly: “Dad, something strange is going to happen tonight.”
“Do you think so, Ty?” I said.
“I’m telling you, it’s in the air. You can feel it.”
There had definitely been signs, especially over the last three days of nonstop campaigning into every region of the state. Fifteen hundred miles, thirty-four stops, in some rented RVs. We called it our No-Doz “72-Hour Drive to Victory Tour.” Kind of patterned after those whistle-stop train rides that candidates used to take.
Except we had an extra advantage called the Internet. My “Geek Squad” transmitted video clips and digital photos of all our rallies onto my Jesse Ventura website as soon as they happened, along with up-to-date information on where we were headed next. This was the first time any politician had really used the Internet; some of the pundits later compared it to JFK’s use of television during his presidential race in 1960.
TERRY: When his staff came up with the Winnebago tour idea for that final weekend, they said they really wanted me to participate. I’d stayed away from the campaign; the whole thing terrified me. I said, “I’m not going unless my parents come along.” My sister and my brother-in-law had just gotten a mobile home, and I rode with them. My brother-in-law drove, and most nights I stayed up, trying to keep him awake. In fact, I started singing cowboy songs to him. He finally told me if I sang any more he was going to crash the bus!
We’d kicked things off at sports bars in the northern suburbs of St. Paul, places like the BeBop and the Mermaid. I’d do