In 1988, “Massachusetts Miracle” governor Michael Dukakis ran for President against incumbent VP George Bush. This very dated SNL parody of Playboy After Dark reminds me I have more of A&E’s Secrets of Playboy series to watch.
One of my business trips in 1988 took me to British Columbia, south of Calgary, to install a hospital computer system. The first thing that always needed to be done was inspecting the computer room and checking the hardware. Every installation had potential technical problems, and some of them were acceptable, at least temporarily, but others were show-stoppers.
The tape drive installed for the minicomputer wasn’t the expected model. The customer said he’d switched to a less expensive unit that had become available. Which would have been fine, if he’d told me that before the customized operating system software had been compiled and written to tape.
I explained to the customer that the system media was useless. The tape drive required a different data density and blocking factor. It was getting late back in Boston, and I immediately got on the phone to update my boss and to ask a colleague to generate a new system tape with the correct parameters. While he did that, a search was made to find the quickest way of getting the tape to me. (Six months later, I had to make similar arrangements when I was in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, but that’s another story.)
Arrangements were made for overnight delivery to the FedEx office at the Spokane, Washington airport. Once I knew Spokane was my destination, I called the in-house travel agent. I needed a room for that night in Spokane, with guaranteed late arrival. The hotel in Canada was informed I would be checking in a day late, but keeping the reservation and extending it through the end of the week.
In those pre-GPS times, every year I bought the latest Rand McNally road atlas for America and Canada. After getting the hotel information from the travel office, I consulted the atlas, figured out my route, and off I went in an Oldsmobile I’d rented at the airport, with a big engine and the sloppy steering that was typical of Olds.
The drive took me into some mountainous terrain, so I was glad to have that big engine. After crossing the Canada/US border, I passed through Bonners Ferry, Idaho. The place looked interesting, and I thought about stopping there the next day on the way back.
Arriving late that night in downtown Spokane, I was able to get something to eat before collapsing at the hotel. In the middle of the night I was awoken by the sound of motorcycles, breaking glass, and yelling. A fight was in progress on the street below, outside of a biker bar. All I could do was shake my head in disbelief and try to get back to sleep.
In the morning I got cleaned up, checked out of the hotel, filled the gas tank, and headed over to the airport. I announced myself at the FedEx office and waited for the package to arrive on a plane from Boston. Once I had it in hand I checked the atlas and started off again, driving back north into Idaho.
As you can see from the picture of the banner, I stopped in Bonners Ferry. Entering the drug store there, it felt like stepping back in time. Everything looked and smelled as though I were in the drug store where I bought a lot of my comic books as a kid. At that moment I had an appreciation, bordering on an epiphany, of how much everything had changed over the previous 20 years.
As I said, there were some very steep hills and mountains along the way. There were escape ramps for runaway lumber trucks with failing brakes. After leaving Bonners Ferry, I passed someone who was going up an extremely steep hill. On foot. It was a skinny, scruffy guy with a beard, wearing some beat-up old clothes. He had a huge wooden cross slung over his shoulder, and on the bottom there was something Jesus didn’t have while carrying his cross — a small wheel.
I had met and spoken with Michael Dukakis several times during my stint as a radio news reporter. In person he was very impressive, being a master of detail who knew how to work a room with great efficiency and effectiveness. So the SNL parody got it right. At that moment of culture shock in Idaho, witnessing the fanaticism of the guy with his cross and its little wheel, I had another epiphany. There was no way Mike Dukakis would win in November.
This past Sunday’s New York Times had a story, dateline Bonners Ferry, about Republican party in-fighting in Idaho. Today, almost 35 years later, a guy who limits his expression of faith to lugging a cross with a wheel up the side of a mountain would probably be considered a liberal.
“They clapped as one candidate advocated “machine guns for everyone” and another called for the state to take control of federal lands.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/15/us/idaho-republican-primary-little-mcgeachin.html