Your father always seems larger than life. I recall listening to my old man as he gave a speech on community economics to a local men's club and thinking that someday I wanted to be just like him – to hold a group of similarly attired businessmen, decked out in club ties and poplin suits, in rapt attention. But time moved on and I had to cut my own swath in life, leaving those youthful dreams to dissipate in the old country club hall like early morning fog in the face of summer sun.
Today there's a new wind blowing in Nevada – a zephyr of hot air stirring up the dust devils from State Line to Reno, a chinook of blast furnace heat hooking the pebbles by the interstates and tossing the tumble weeds into the air along the by ways and highways from Las Vegas to Lake Tahoe, and a howling williwaw of words blowing the pomaded hair on the gamblers back and short skirts of the street walkers up all along the gaudy neon strips and the less luminous and far less desirable side streets in the heartlands of america's easy pleasure palaces.
Jack Carter, Jimmy Carter's son, has decided, after long discussions and a particularly deep and tortured thought process, to run for US Senator from Nevada, opposing John Ensign, a Republican, who will be seeking his second term. Carter has resided in Nevada since 2003, when he moved to the "all For Our Country" state from Bermuda, where he operated Carter Global, some sort of private investment company which is said to have netted him plenty in offshore monies, which he, in turn, invested wisely and which are now propelling him into the heart of america's capital of instant gratification and on a quest for the US Senate, and who can say, to highest office in the land.
Like his larger than life father, Mr Peanut, before him, the Little Peanut made his bones on the old peanut farm, picking and shoveling George Washington Carver's favorite legume, from dawn till dusk, working until his hands were raw from the exertions. In a story he is loath to discuss, except in a daily fashion on the campaign trail, in front of every camera that gets in his face and in the kitchen of every houseful of eager listeners, he relates that his fingers required additional paperwork to describe their condition when fingerprinted for his Navy induction – all due to his hard work and diligence, while working with a shovel from the age of six. a small shovel, we earnestly hope, for those little hands in that rambling, dusty peanut warehouse.
Today, like his father, the Little Peanut is off to do evangelical work in what purports to be a pretty tough state and an even tougher sell. Not only must he boost himself in a state a bit leery of political newcomers, especially the sons of former peanut farmers, but he has plunged headlong into a locale noted for one armed bandits, illegal houses of ill repute, legal houses of prostitution, casinos of varying sizes and profitability, Indian reservations, homes of UFO aficionados, motorcycle gangs, the Mustang Bridge Ranch, military bases, enormous trailer parks, vast tracts of desert, Californians fleeing the onerous and anti-business taxation found at their former homes, foo fighters, the Nevada test site, formations of colored lights, stealth fighters, roulette tables, bombing ranges, broken men, lively ladies, drunkards, rounders and assorted hangers on.
But the Little Peanut has armed himself with the plethora of Democratic approved programs, key words, ideas garnered in Bermuda, anti-Bush rants and the like to appeal to what he figures is a pretty good cross section of what he calculates are folks who'll throw in with him and propel him into Harry Reid's orbit and his father's shadow.
according to his web site, he's for all sorts of really important stuff, including liberty, democracy and the constitution, with the latter being important, as he says, so each major part can watch the other part, which, no doubt, will be key in constituencies like Las Vegas and in several of its key addresses, especially around the poles on the bar tops. and to keep himself in vogue with the times and the wishes of people all across that wide land, the Little Peanut has come out for the rule of law, family and community values and cooperation, that all encompassing value, tops with everybody, big and small, everywhere.
But the Little Peanut is pretty seriously upset and confounded worked up with those problematic dissimulations, those same major Democratic hang-ups, those Harry Reid and John Kerry and Hillary Clinton and Ted Kennedy and Howard Dean raucously blathered hackneyed fibberies – like the problems with the invasion of Iraq, the use of too few troops to win the victory in afghanistan, the difficulties with the missing body armor, the appointment of political cronies like Condoleezza Rice to high positions of power, the pulling of the cloak of secrecy over military operations to grab, no doubt, terror suspects and to monitor their operations and phone calls and such, the dragging in of mendacious lobbyists and allowing them write the laws of the land with nary a peep in opposition, the purposeful confusion of the latest drug plan – which was written by the drug companies themselves to gin up their own gigantic rake-offs - and its burdensome impact on an in-law, and the utter preposterous illegality of the President's eavesdropping on americans in his na've attempt to win the war on terror. No sirree, the Little Peanut doesn't want the President to decide he needs to be watched – that, it seems with the growing evidence available, should be left to others.
Nope, it looks like the Little Peanut is a chip off the old block, as he gathers Nevadan windage in his run at the Senate. and as the Little Peanut crisscrosses the "all For Our Country" state, he too, may stop and kneel and pick up a handful of desert soil and crumble it in his hand, just like Mr Peanut used to, and wonder if his exertions and the dirt, if all of his work and exertions, are really valued by the people of Nevada.
The Little Peanut likes to stand on his favorite rise far outside Las Vegas and look through the night air and the distorting heat mirages at the faraway twinkling lights which remind him of the capital of Bermuda, as it's seen from across the harbor and the heights of Paget. and as he does so, he's reminded that Nevada is not quite as high type as Hamilton, that his shorts and high socks were not as nearly as welcome on Las Vegas Boulevard or Zenor Street, that he longs for the fruit infused rums to be found in the huge dispensers on the bar at the Pickled Onion and misses the somewhat dank exclusive coolness of the Elbow Beach Club.
It is a long way from the choking peanut dust, the little blue bandanna which covered his runny nose, the tiny short-handled shovel of his childhood and the sounds of his father's continual haggling over the price of commodities. and some days the Little Peanut wonders if those recurrent White House dreams are really in the cards offered by that reluctant dealer of the fates.
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