Don't Start the Revolution Without Me! - Jesse Ventura [7]
During the 1970s and ’80s, Rudy Perpich was elected governor twice. His detractors called him “Governor Goofy,” and he did do some curious things. He’d personally stop speeders on the freeways, and go back to the ghost town where he was born to “talk” to his ancestors. But Rudy was all right. I actually think he was ahead of his time. He proposed selling off the governor’s mansion to save money, and later I ended up shutting down the old mansion for a while after the legislature cut back on my budget. Rudy also worked hard to put Minnesota on the international map by traveling to many foreign countries, something I emulated with my trade missions to Mexico, Japan, China, and even Cuba.
Wendell Anderson was another remarkable governor, a former Olympic hockey player. After he found it necessary to raise people’s taxes fairly steeply, he traveled to every county telling the voters his reasons—and he won all eighty-seven counties in the next election.
In 1978, another Rudy—last name of Boschwitz, known for doing these hokey TV commercials for his Plywood Minnesota company—successfully ran for the U.S. Senate. He was replaced after two terms by a former wrestler who had no political experience, and who no one thought had a chance. That was Paul Wellstone, a liberal professor from Carleton College.
Between 1964 and 1984, from Hubert Humphrey to Walter Mondale, five out of the six presidential elections had a Minnesota native on one of the major party tickets. No other state in the union could claim that distinction.
Not that I paid too much attention to all this when I was growing up, except for my father’s political opinions. George had been a terrific swimmer—he could go across the Mississippi and back—and that gene apparently passed on to me. I was captain of the swim team at Roosevelt High, a district champion in the butterfly stroke. I also played defensive end on an unbeaten football team my senior year, got average grades, and ran with the same kids I had since grade school. We called ourselves the South Side Boys, and did a lot of camping, fishing, and drinking. I liked being a center of attention. And I liked being mischievous.
The one subject that grabbed me was “Mac” McInroy’s American history class. I’d get in some heated discussions there. And his admonition to his students stayed with me. He’d say, if we didn’t like the way things were, then stop bitching and start a petition and do something about it. America, he drilled into us, was a country where the individual could make a real difference.
My brother Jan had seen a Richard Widmark movie called The Frogmen and, after he graduated from high school in 1966, decided that’s what he wanted to be. Three years later, when I graduated, my parents badly wanted me to go on to college. I tried for a swimming scholarship to Northern Illinois, but I was only in the upper half of my class and not the upper third, so academically I didn’t qualify. I was working for the state highway department, repairing bridges, when I went along with a friend to hear what a Navy recruiter had to say. Even though Jan had come home on leave from Vietnam and tried to convince us this was a lousy idea, I ended up getting talked into enlisting. It was September 11, 1969.
My mom was especially upset about it. My dad opposed it, too. I think one of the driving forces, subconsciously, that led me to enlist was that every other member of my family was a war veteran. George had seven Bronze Stars for battles in World War Two. He fought in Normandy, Remagen Bridge, the Battle of the Bulge. He started off against Rommel in the North African desert, came up through Anzio in Italy, and finished in Berlin. Bernice was an Army nurse in North Africa. Jan was in Vietnam. Not that any of my family would have cared, but I must have wondered how I could sit down with them at the dinner table: three veterans and one nonveteran. Especially in a time of war.
So, I reported for boot camp with