A Recent Conversation with My Father

Fifteen minutes into a recent conversation with my father, I stopped—and marveled. Here he was, almost 88, and he was correcting me on some finer points of Constitutional knowledge, something I take great pride in and occasionally put to good use, such as recognizing when my Constitutional rights are being violated.

We were discussing the implementation of the federal income tax during the Progressive Era and I said it was inconceivable that the 17^th Amendment would be passed today, even if the nation was on the verge of financial collapse.

“It was the 16^th Amendment,” he said. “The 17^th was direct election of the Senators.”

He was right, of course.

Our conversation veered toward the 25^th Amendment and the convoluted provisions for removing the President because of disability. He knew it by heart and knew it would never be used with our current President because his Cabinet has absolutely no integrity.

In my former life, I used to teach American government with gusto. I made my students learn the Constitution and its Amendments by rote instruction, the only time in my career I ever used rote pedagogy. I talked about this with Dad, and his teaching philosophy when it came to rote instruction. He used it way more than I did in his 40-year teaching career and I have always been skeptical of its effectiveness. I prefer more creative approaches.

He said, “I’m alive because of rote instruction. The Marines taught the M-1 rifle by rote and it worked. (Dad is a combat veteran of the Korean War and saw a lot of action.)

That gave me a pause.

Next, we moved onto to his recent attendance at the Three Dog Night concert at Spirit Mountain Casino, with my step-mother. It was the first rock concert of his life. This was a man who special ordered VWs from the factory without a radio. I drove one of these radioless cars in high school and it was a source of amazement to my friends and dates. It made us have to talk when I drove. Imagine that.

He told me had a good time and “learned” a lot at the show.

Learned? At a rock concert?

After that, we moved onto one of our favorite subjects, Perry Mason. We discussed the episode where a dissipated poet is a suspect in a murder, but it turns out he didn’t do it. It was a scorned female lover.

“Poets don’t kill,” he said. “They don’t have it in them.”

That sounded like a great line to open a mystery novel, where a poet does kill.