By Mark L. Taylor
Daily Call (12/18/11)
So my friend, Harvey Weinberg, and I went out gathering recall signatures Saturday afternoon. We set up an impromptu recall station on the edge of the Onalaska DMV office lawn, right across from Woodmans. We had our clipboards and petitions and pockets full of pens at the ready.
I had a 5-gallon bucket of sand to plant my big beautiful American flag in. A steady little breeze set it to flapping smartly. A ratty old car with three teenage boys sailed past with something grinding in the front right wheel well and trailing an oily plume of smoke like a B-17 bomber making its desperate way across the English Channel. The skinny kid with acne riding shotgun flipped me the bird. I waved back and smiled.
A few minutes later some wild woman in wearing looked to be a well used cat fir parka at the wheel of a rusted out white van shook her fist and screamed hysterically across the stream of traffic. I shouted out a “Merry Christmas to you” as the vehicle went shuddering around the corner and wheezing across the busy intersection.
Another woman rolled past in a pimped out Cadillac SUV and stylish Sarah Palin shades and yelled at me to, “Get a job!”
“Thanks, I’ve got one Walker hasn’t yet eliminated,” I called back.
My favorite heckler was another van that went by where the woman behind the wheel was sputtering nasties as she wagged a digital representation of Michel Bachmann’s IQ score at us. The elderly woman in the passenger seat beside her slyly gave us a thumbs up and a little smile as they passed by.
Nice neighborhood.
Actually, it really was. Over a third of the folks dashing about on their holiday shopping missions tooted their horns, waved, gave a cheerful “thumbs up” or even slowed down to call out through their opened windows that they had already signed and thanks for carrying the cause. Maybe 10 percent were Walker Flying Monkey Goons. That’s probably about the same rate for dyspepsia.
We didn’t have the easiest spot for folks to pull off and sign, but we picked up about 15 signatures in a little over an hour.
Santa Makes the Scene
Our favorite heckler of the day lumbered into view just before we called it the day.
It was Santa himself at the wheel of a pricey, bright red SUV! Honest to God! Really, I’m not kidding - ask Harvey!
He paused at the driveway across the road, squinting across the flow of traffic through his little rimless Santa eyeglasses to see if we were naughty or nice. There was the big bushy white beard and the fur trimmed Santa hat. Wow, I thought, I think Santa’s gonna sign our petition. Is there a North Pole, Wisconsin?
I stood up straighter and held up my clipboard with the “Recall Walker” bumper sticker on the backside and waved it at Santa. Instead of a jolly “Ho, Ho, Ho, let me sign your petition, little man” he gunned the engine and snarled, “Yer’ gettin’ nothin’ for Christmas!”
I was stunned. If anyone had asked, I would have assumed old Santa would be a socialist; you know, a “from each according to his need” kind’a guy. But, no, this grumpy old elf was clearly a fascist.
My guess is it wasn’t the real Santa. I’m betting it was one of those evil agent provacatuer elves Governor Walker talked about sending out into the streets when he had that phone conversation last February with David “Daddy War Bucks” Koch about what Daddy War Bucks was demanding for Christmas this year.
Last time I heard, there were over 507,000 lumps of coal heading Walker’s way this season.
Keep it up, folks, let’s gather those signatures.
“Ho, Ho, Ho!”
