Don't Start the Revolution Without Me! - Jesse Ventura [6]
Terry laughed. “Your dad’s stories,” she said, “were amazing.”
TERRY: When we started doing the family holiday thing, it was unbelievable. His whole family had the best time sitting around arguing politics. I would just sit there, because my own family was really non-political. In southern Minnesota, when you went to someone’s home or a gathering, you didn’t talk about your religion, you didn’t ask how much anything cost that they owned, and you never mentioned politics! But his family would sound like they were beating the living heck out of each other mentally, and at the end they’d say, “Wow, what a great time we had!”
My dad George only got as far as the eighth grade, and worked as a laborer for the Minneapolis street department. He was ten years older than my mom, Bernice, who survived the Great Depression growing up on an Iowa farm and somehow put herself through nursing school. They both served in Africa during World War Two. He was an enlisted man, and she was a lieutenant. I remember when they’d get into an argument sometimes, he’d say, “Ah, the lieutenant’s on my case again. What the hell is them officers’ problem, anyway?”
I was born on July 15, 1951. My older brother Jan and I grew up in a two-story house in a lower-middle-class neighborhood of south Minneapolis. When I was in sixth grade, I used to set up a ring in our basement and stage different fights among my classmates. Sometimes I’d referee, sometimes I’d jump in there myself. Pro boxing was pretty big then in Minneapolis, and Jan and I loved listening to the bouts on the radio. I was probably no more than nine when my elementary teacher asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. When I said, “a pro boxer,” she told me that was a ridiculous idea.
Bernice was the disciplinarian in our family, and also handled all the finances, including our allowances. George was an easygoing type—except when it came to politics. We often watched the TV news while we ate dinner, and he argued back loudly whenever something pissed him off. He didn’t have much good to say about any politician, or our government. Minnesota’s own Senator Hubert Humphrey—whose son I eventually defeated in the governor’s race—he called “Old Rubber-Lip.” Richard Nixon was “The Tailless Rat.”
Years later, I remember we were watching TV together the night Nixon gave his famous “I am not a crook” speech during Watergate. “Look, you can see the son of a bitch is lying,” George said. I raised my eyebrows. “Come on, how do you know that?”
“Because anyone with sweat on their upper lip is lyin’ to you,” he said. I’ve thought of that a lot lately, watching George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
Minnesota had quite a few people like my father, more than you find in most states. They liked straight shooters—politicians who weren’t afraid to put themselves on the line for what they believed. Even if those beliefs went against the grain of American public opinion. A statewide poll once showed that Minnesota voters favored “independents” above either the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party or the Republicans. The thing was, party didn’t matter so much. The man was what counted.
Think about some of the unique politicians that Minnesotans went for. Harold Stassen—called the “Boy Governor” when he was elected in 1939—came out fiercely against the isolationists, who were pretty powerful just before World War Two started. He actually stepped down as governor to join the Navy, ending up with the Pacific fleet fighting against the Japanese. Can you imagine any politician doing that today? For the most part, they wouldn’t let their third cousins serve! After the war, Stassen was instrumental in creating NATO and the United Nations. He then became best known as a “perennial candidate” for president. He ran ten times between 1948 and 1992, and the media made a laughingstock out of him. But I