Nixon is the reason I'm alive

Now, you don't hear that very often, now do you?

In 1968, my mother was a 38-year-old divorced mother of two working at JC Penney and hating every minute of it. Her good friend, Ann, was also friends with Pauline, who had a 47-year-old bachelor brother who owned a fire salvage business in town. One day during the first week of November, my mother was going back to work after having lunch with Ann at the corner drugstore and they came upon Pauline's brother walking down the sidewalk. Ann introduced my mother to him. One of his most memorable features was that he wore pants that were too short with yellow socks. He wore these things because they had been stock at the store that no one would buy, so he wore them. He always did things like that.

On Wednesday of the following week, the day after the 1968 presidential election, my mother looked up from her counter at Penney's to see him coming towards her. He smiled and approached the counter.

"Did your candidate win?" he asked.

"Yes, yes he did," my mother replied.

His smile broadened and he asked her if he could take her to the drugstore's soda fountain on her break that afternoon. She said yes and the rest, as they say, is history.

They married a few months later and thirty-seven years ago today, just a little more than a year after they met, I was born.

You go, Tricky Dick.