Maybe I'm nuts...but...After seeing this clip of Barak Obama, describing how his father (who would have been 5 years old at the time) served in WWII, I felt obliged to share with you a brief summary of my rather mundane story.

   Ahhh…I remember well the year of my birth, 1960, as I was 13 at the time. It seems like yesterday.

   Little did I know (5 years later) when I voted for Nixon what would transpire in the world of politics just a few years earlier. It didn’t seem that long ago that I was on the front lines in Korea wondering why I had ever voted for Taft in the first place. Nixon (of course) was forced to resign over an affair that was caught on tape in a hotel. We would have known nothing of it were it not for Julian Assange.

   I recall to this day how my father, a WWI veteran, watched as HIS father (who went down on the Titanic) ventured off to Vietnam to fight the Germans in WWII. It made ME wonder if I would someday have to take up arms and fight in the war of 1812. Thankfully, President Kennedy put a stop to that before he was shot and killed by John Wilkes Booth.

 

I'm the one in the red.

   At least my twin brother who died 3 years prior to my birth (in the Hindenburg disaster) and later discovered gold at Sutter’s Mill, would have plenty of time to thank his lucky stars that the only combat related action HE ever saw was in the balcony of the movie theater during the premier of Gone With The Wind in 1983. Oh that Emma Jane Hooplemann…she was a scrappy little minx that one.

   I was 24 years old when I married my wife who was 13 years my junior. She was 22 at the time which is nearly 15 years older than I am now and although we have spent 26 years together we are now looking forward to our 11^th anniversary and are in the final stages of planning our wedding. 

My grandmother, who has always regretted not living long enough to see man walk on the moon (as she passed in 1973) will be our flower girl next year.

My 3 great grandmothers on my uncle's side of the family.

   As an orthodox Jew, I attend mass every Saturday, which granted, is quite an accomplishment for a Presbyterian. Why, it was just last week that I confessed to being an atheist. With my hand on the Koran, I swear to God I did! 

   My ancestry comes from a very long line of quite pale black people from Scotland, England, Ireland and west Texas. Actually, 3 of them were the first pale black lesbians (from Glasgow) to arrive in Texas having taken a covered wagon all the way from the British Isles.  In fact, when I was a lad, my close personal friend, William Wallace (whom I have never met) and I, planted a maple tree, (which George Washington eventually cut down), in memory of my aunt…Jemima…who was yet to be born. That maple grew strong for 100 years and we had it made into a lovely kitchen table on the 50th anniversary of its planting.That table exists to this day in the log cabin home of a Mrs. Jack Butterworth whose husband seems perpetually hungry.

   Washington lied when he claimed it was a cherry tree.

   Given the honest and factual accounting of my family history(upon challenge I will simply have a spokesperson laugh it of as an obvious "misspeak") as I have presented it here, clearly I am presidential material and so, I will begin this column by stating that I have no intention of running in 2010and therefore, I would appreciate your votes.

Or...Maybe I'm Nuts.

Craig Andresen