PMA '08: Thanks for the (Political) Memories, AC

The Senate Watergate hearings that ended in the resignation of President Richard Nixon began on national television on ABC on May 17, 1973. The hearings went on until August 7, 1973, on NBC, with the networks rotating coverage every 3 days.

Eighty-five percent of the country watched. I was among them.

I dragged a blue plastic black-and-white TV set into my back yard as July and August wore on, set it up on one of those square, white-plastic yard tables. I filled a wading pool for my 5-year-old son, Scott, to entertain him, and remained glued to the grainy image of John Dean and the Watergate 5. Scott ran back and forth through the sprinkler, splashing happily in the wading pool in the sweltering Midwestern heat.

I was not nominated for Mother of the Year, but I was able to watch my son and witness history at the same time.

Scott reminds me that I would periodically call him over to the television set and say, "Look at this! This is history happening! Remember this!"

He was 5 years old, and he remembers Watergate, although he remembers it differently than I do.

We laugh about Mom's political junkie tendencies 36 years later, but Scott is the only one of his 40-year-old contemporaries who does remember watching the Watergate hearings on television.

In the winter of 2007, as today's presidential candidates kicked off the Iowa caucus campaign in hopes of becoming the standard bearer for their party, I sensed another historic opportunity, and I was determined to be there.

In the dead of a bitter Iowa winter, I covered every appearance in the Iowa Quad Cities area and anywhere within Iowa, in general. And there were many.

A Short Recap of Memories

• Fred Thompson trotting toward the White House, with a trout apparently in hot pursuit (see file photo).

• John Edwards with me at the IMAX Theater, while I'm wearing an Obama Press Pass issued to me earlier that evening.

• Barack Obama "fired up and ready to go" at the Davenport River Center.

• "Huckaboom or Huckabust?" hit the hustings.

• Romney describing how his kids saved a bird from a nest. He was wearing a heavy orange sweater in a room at the Davenport Jumer's Castle Lodge that was easily 85 degrees. (The cameramen were dripping with sweat.)

• Riding in the elevator in Des Moines with John Edwards' parents, after the Iowa caucuses. We talked about the next day's trip to New Hampshire.

• Posing with Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa inside the Pepsi Center during the DNC in Denver in August. (And then asking, "Who is that guy?")

• The graciousness of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. for posing and chatting with me.

• Other celebrity sightings: Oprah, Steven Spielberg, Mo Rocca, Kanye West, Charlize Theron, Stuart Townsend, Jesse Jackson and Jesse Jackson, Jr. ... just to name a few.

Hanging Out with Sen. Joe Biden

I was so ubiquitous at Iowa caucus events that, after a while, it was just a few faithful fans and I in Dr. Joe Seng's Davenport, Iowa, living room while Sen. Joseph Biden (now our vice president) and his family (primarily brother Jimmy and son Hunter) worked the room.

I remember interviewing Biden's granddaughter, Finnegan, 9, at the Davenport Red-White-and-Blue Democratic Fundraiser Ball, chatting with her about Sidwell Friends School -- the very same school that President Obama's daughters attend in Washington, D.C.

Throughout the bitter caucus season, I watched the debates and reported on them. But I also watched "American Idol." Even as I wrote about my certainty that Barack Obama would win the Iowa caucuses and grab the golden Ticket to Ride (all the way to the presidency, as it turns out), I was mocked by readers in a healthy democratic fashion.

(Of course, I also predicted a win for David Archuletta over David Cook, so sometimes my crystal ball was murky.)

I still go back and read the comments made on my AC political articles and predictions and wonder what some of those writers have to say now that Barack Obama is our 44^th president.

I am grateful some readers were willing to listen to my from-the-trenches reports. You seemed more eager to "come over here and listen to this" than my 5-year-old son was in 1973.

Heated debate ensued, most of it very healthy and good for us, as citizens of this great democracy. And I always tried to get pictures for you, faithful friends. Once, I even slipped on the ice and fell under the John Edwards bus at the IMAX Theater in an attempt to get a good shot. Fortunately, the bus was parked at the time. (It was later in the season that Edwards slipped and fell under his own bus, figuratively speaking.)

Covering the Conventions

When the opportunity to cover the DNC, the RNC and the Belmont Town Hall Meeting came, courtesy of Associated Content, I was thrilled. History was being made. I could be part of it! And this time, I didn't have to drag the TV set into the yard and supervise a 5-year-old at the same time. This time, I could utilize that journalism degree I earned at the University of Iowa back in the day.

I got on a plane, flew to Denver, slept on an air mattress, fell down a hill (read: Yet Another Reason to Hate Fox News), commandeered a city truck driven by Spanish-speaking city employees (my sole contribution was "Ay, carcamba!" a la Bart Simpson) and talked the drivers of a Secret Service golf cart into escorting me to the Pepsi Center's front doors, to get you, faithful readers, the pictures and the stories.

Through it all, I reminded myself of one thing. Whether I was (a) sitting in Invesco Field, (b) interviewing protesters in Cuernavaca Park, (c) standing in Grant Park with tears streaming down my face, (d) running from the police in St. Paul, (e) being tear-gassed in Denver after the "Rage Against the Machine" concert or (f) watching Rudy Giuliani hand out baseballs in Florida, I knew this: "I am witnessing history."

If Scott, now 40, had been with me, I would have shouted to him, "Come on over and take a look at this!"

A Few More Convention Memories, If You Don't Mind

I enjoyed every moment. Even when it means:

• Falling down the steepest hill outside Invesco Field like a blonde tumbleweed

• Watching Ron Paul, Barry Goldwater, Jr., Tucker Carlson and Jesse Ventura onstage at the Ron Paul Libertarian Rally for America in Minneapolis, Minnesota

• Boarding a bus in downtown St. Paul, Minnesota, with an Abraham Lincoln look-alike (whose beard was falling off)

• Embarking upon the Closeted Gay Republican Tour, which ended up at the very stall at the Minneapolis Airport where Larry Craig was arrested!

I cannot thank Associated Content enough for the generous offer to cover the Democratic and Republican conventions. I have enough tall tales for a lifetime, and I will be eternally grateful to Associated Content News Director Tim Skillern (who probably thinks I'm seriously skewed, after some of the situations I described.) Tim would drop me off at some remote venue, and I would talk a stranger, a lady in a VW convertible (top down) into giving me a ride home after the event. I am grateful, also, to the AC employees who allowed me to sleep on their air mattress. (Gina...thanks!)

And I am grateful to YOU, faithful readers! If you were not a faithful reader, I hope you will become one in the future, because I really do have a few more stories left in me. Some are entertaining, some are serious and all are written because I want to write them, not because I have to write them.

Other Pursuits

I'm just as passionate about covering the movies, for example. I was the (Davenport, Iowa) Quad City Times film and book critic for 15 years. By spring, a book of my reviews from the '70s (It Came from the '70s) will be published, hopefully to be followed by a sequel about the films of the '80s. As I covered politics, American Idol, the Chicago Film Festival and other topics that interest me (in typically random fashion), I also completed an 80,000-word novel, Out of Time (www.outoftimethenovel.com), a short story collection Ghostly Tales of Route 66: Chicago to Oklahoma (Vol I), (other volumes to follow; see YouTube videos) and a 50,000-word short story collection (just sold), Hellfire & Damnation.

So, I've been busy, but I'm not going to stop covering the news for Associated Content any time soon.

I also want to thank AC for being the kind of forum that allows its writers write about what interests them. I feel grateful and humble that some of you like reading what I write. (Keep up the good work on that end. I'll try to keep it up on mine!)

In fact, in the spirit shown as long ago as 1973 with my 5-year-old son, I've begun suggesting that my new granddaughters (Elise & Ava), born January 11^th, 2009, start appreciating the drama that is U.S. politics. (You're never too young, I tell their poor parents.) These twin girls are stuck with me as their grandmother and life mentor. What adventures lie in store for the three of us?

Hopefully, the future holds as many good moments and good memories as I have stored up during this year of writing for Associated Content.

Ah, Elise and Ava, my brand-new little granddaughters! We have many adventures ahead of us. I can't wait for them to begin!

Thanks for the memories, Associated Content! Let the games begin... and continue!