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Song du Jour

Sinead O'Connor, "He Prayed" (from the year's most overlooked CD, Throw Down Your Arms)

True story.

Yesterday morning I wrote a song. Or parts of a song, called "From The Basements of Minnesota," about the "prophets and poets" from here, and about how the feel-it-in-the-air sea change is coming in part from the Midwest and its wallflower-until-pushed people. Afterwards, on a brilliant autumn Sunday in Minnesota, I took the dog to that little oasis of civility, the dog park by Lake Of The Isles, where complete strangers talk about life and how much they love their dogs.

I wasn't in the mood to socialize. I'd gotten my fill of people on the weekend, so after I picked up my pup's entrance poop, I walked across the park and sat down on a bench in the sun.

Almost immediately, an older couple joined me. I offered the woman a crappy plastic footrest I'd had my feet on, which she politely turned down. Their dog was a beautiful white English Setter with brown spots. I called her "the prettiest girl in school."

"Joan, are you OK here?," said the man, a seventysomething gent with a baseball cap who looked to be in as good a fighting shape as his wife, and that's when I realized I was sitting next to the former vice-president of the United States and the former second-lady.

We sat there and stayed quiet until I cleared my throat and said, "Looks like we're gonna throw those bums out in November."

To which Mrs. Mondale said, "Oh I hope so," and we were off and running. He said he'd just read Bob Woodward's State Of Denial, the most pertinent fact of which to him, he said, was the revelation from a Bush aide that the current president has never asked a single question. Of anyone. Which recalls what Jimmy Carter said of Reagan and their transitional meeting in 1980, and how "disturbed" the outgoing chief-of-staff was at how unconcerned the new president was with details about domestic and international affairs.

"I bet you guys asked a few questions back in the day," I said, and Mr. Mondale said that you can't discuss international situations without asking lots of questions. I said my son goes to Anthony Middle School, and that at the beginning of the year I asked his civics teacher how I could get my son to talk about school at the end of the day.

"That's a good question," said the teacher. "I don't have a good answer, but Albert Einstein's parents would always ask him when he got home from school, 'What questions did you ask today?'"

They loved that, and said they were going to pass it on to their grandchildren. I told them the way things are going, the Republican convention in 2008 here could be a wake for the GOP, and that my 25-year-old friend Brianna predicts it could be something like the Democratic National Convention of 1968, which inspired riots in Chicago.

The second-couple seemed impressed with the kid's sense of history and hope.

Finally I told them that I write for City Pages, and that I'd just written a song that morning, about how we're living through a moment and how it feels like change is going to come, yet again, from here. The second-lady said she wanted the song to be out NOW. The ambassador to Japan nodded and said, "It's a very unique state."

We talked for 45 minutes. About how happy their daughter Eleanore and son-in-law Chan Poling are, and about our dogs. Theirs is a puppy, named Biscuit, after the great left-for-dead champion Sea Biscut, about whom Mrs. Mondale is encyclopedic. I told them my family, city liberals from way back, has loved them forever -- all six kids and my mom, but not my dad, a deep thinker, voracious reader, alternative spiritualist, and a staunch Republican.

"You working on him?," said Mrs. Mondale, with a confused smile.

"Since the Vietnam War," I said, and we laughed and talked some more. She asked me if I'd read Garrison Keillor's column on "losers" that morning, and I had, and we both agreed what a great writer he is, and she said it was cool that Keillor had been "so nice to Fritz." I said that sometimes winners, like the ones in charge now, are the real losers. The vice-president smiled warmly and got up from the bench to walk with Biscuit.

Keillor:

"(Walther Mondale) lost the presidency by one of the biggest landslides in history to an aging actor whose grip on reality, never firm to begin with, was becoming hallucinatory. Mr. Reagan was sort of the Columbus of our time, a better P.R. man than sailor, but so be it. Mr. Mondale is a buoyant man with a sense of humor who enjoys his life in Minnesota, where people are happy to see him, and when you do, you see that losing is far from the worst thing that can happen to a man. Far from it."

After a few more minutes I said goodbye, and the second-lady and I jinxed each other when we said, "It was a real pleasure meeting you." The vice-president had moseyed over to the middle of the dog park, and as he stood there alone with his dog, looking off at the lake and the wild blue horizon of downtown Minneapolis, I couldn't help but think of those old Life magazine photos of Bobby Kennedy running on the beach with his Irish Setter.

When he saw me leaving, he turned toward me, put out his hand, shook it, and said with a wide grin, "Say 'Hi' to your dad for me."

So I did. I called him up when I got home and got him and my mom on the phone and told the tale. They were thrilled. My mom reminded me that my sister-in-law Kim works down the hall from Mr. Mondale, whom I addressed as "sir" the entire time. My dad said, "(Walter Mondale) comes from the same town as your grandfather. Graceville. He played football for the high school."

Maybe there's hope for the old man yet.

Posted by Jim Walsh at October 16, 2006 12:02 AM

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