Replies

Glad you enjoy the posts...I do go on from time to time.

and on that note, I just posted this on Facebook so for your smiling pleasure I present....

MY LIFE WITH NANCY PELOSI

Let me make it very clear that I don’t think I’ve ever said a single word to Nancy Pelosi in my life.

And if I had I certainly would not be proud of it.

However, I did know Nancy Pelosi oncit upon a time and , well I’m not proud of it. Still, it’s an interesting story.

Nancy Pelosi used to be Nancy D’Alesandro. Her father was Mayor of Baltimore. MY father was a big union guy in the local Brotherhood of Carpenters chapter (101) and very involved in Baltimore politics.

I grew up in Baltimore, in an area known as Morrell Park, not too far from Little Italy. Pelosi’s family lived in Little Italy. I spent much of my childhood very involved in local politics but you should smile. Because as a young child I recall on every local election day we would go down town and my father’s job was to zap all the voting booth counts. Back in those days voting booths were metal affairs that had little metal handle things. The voter would pull these handles down under the candidate for whom they wished to vote…boom, boom, boom. Once all the desired handles were pulled, a big lever below the little handle things would be pulled in a big circular motion and the votes were registered in the back of the machine.

I don’t think these things were electronic. I think the votes were counted by some kind of springwire trip kind of thing. A lot of my childhood toys had this kind of device and maybe I’m being unclear but I was what…maybe 7, 8 years old before we moved out of the city?

My father and his union buddies somehow zapped all those vote counts out of the counter thing, I don’t know how. Then they would go in the booths and cast votes as directed by Mayor Tommy D’Alesandro to an end that he desired. One year me and my brother even got to go into the booth and pull the little levers and the big round thing final recording lever over and over, under the explicit directions of my father that we only vote for whoever D’Alesandro wanted. We’d drive to various voting places as directed by D’Alesandro, and so did all the other union guys.

Heh.

Hey, I didn’t know what the hell it was all about but you folks in Merryland, if you think your vote counts forgetaboutit.

My father did carpenter work on D’Alesandro’s house (I’m sure I’m spelling that name wrong). Me and my brother were often in the D’Alesandro house, I don’t know why but I do know my mother worked at the White Tower night work so maybe he took us along cause he needed to watch us.

I saw Mayor D’Alesandro’s daughter Nancy quite often.

Like I said, I don’t remember ever speaking to her although I heard her speak often. She was a teenager at the time while I was about 8 or 9 years younger, if I’ve got that right. Nancy went to Catholic school, not sure which one but I remember how perfect the pleats were in her uniform and how I admired those perfect pleats. I too attended Catholic school at the time and the pleats in my uniform were always coming undone and I used to wonder how Nancy D’Alesandro kept her pleats so perfect. Funny how little kids think but I still remember being a little obsessed with those pleats.

I remember her talking to her mother, just normal stuff, how was her day. She talked to her father quite a bit and he gave her whatever she wanted. He’d tell her she couldn’t go somewhere and she’d pout and ask prettyplease and that kind of thing. I don’t recall any other children in that house so I think Nancy might have been an only child. But I could be wrong.

I don’t know what my father’s relationship with Mayor D’Alesandro was but in due course my father did rise high within the union. I’m thinking the Mayor paid him well for his carpentry work, I dunno.

So that’s it. A big nothing but here I am almost 60 and Nancy’s looking at age 70. She still looks pretty good for her age, she’s always neat. Nancy D’Alesandro was nothing if not always neat and pleat-perfect.

She was raised in a surround of corruption and guess what?

On that she hasn’t changed a bit either.