Bob Dole Says 'Hello'

By John Ambrosavage
The Free Press

Many years ago, during a more prosperous, joyful, and oddly, more violent era, cars were bigger, and airports were smaller. People drove really big cars to really small airports. My father's car was so big it seated more people than the passenger terminal of the municipal airport.

Where I grew up, amidst the cows, the pastures, and the beer steins of the midwest, the airport was so small and cute it had a stripped blue awning, and was right in the neighborhood, a short bike ride from home. On summer nights my friends and I would often bike to the airport and hang out. Besides loving airplanes, we loved what they did. They left town. This was high on our list of "things to do once we grow up."

On most of our evening jaunts to the airport, we would watch as the old Ozark Airline high-wing turbo-props took off and landed, plying the trade along the Mississippi river. But one summer night, as my friends Randy, Phil and I stood on the observation area of the tarmac, Randy yelled "Look at that!" as a Lear Jet sliced across the night sky, banked, and landed. This was long before corporate jets were as common as Junk bonds and S&L failures, so we were much more interested in the jet than the three men that deplaned. One, a tall, lanky man, surveyed the tarmac, and seeing absolutely no one else waiting his arrival, walked over to us and said "Hi boys! Senator Bob Dole - Kansas!"

God knows if Bob Dole was campaigning for anything at that time. But that is the thing about Bob Dole. Ever since he got up out of his post World War II hospital bed, and learned how to walk again, he has been running. When he deplaned from that Lear jet, and saw no one there except three kids, he did not see three kids. He saw three kids who would be voting in a few years. More importantly, he saw three kids with six parents who were voters. He chatted with us for a minute, and, as he walked into the cute little terminal said : "Tell your parents Bob Dole says hello!

Okay, right now, as Ambro Polls report, Bob Dole is running a close second to random road kill. The polls may be right. Bob Dole is a relic from a bygone era. An era when kids could bike to the airport, prop them, unlocked, against the wall of the terminal, and walk in without being x-rayed for small weaponry. If Bob Dole does lose this election, though, do not count Bob Dole out. Because he never will. Running is what he does. Even if Bob Dole dies one day, which seems unlikely, I suspect he tombstone will read - "Here lies Bob Dole - remember me this November."

Staff cartoonist John Ambrosavage has too much spare time.

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Contents on this page were published in the July/August, 1996 edition of the Washington Free Press.
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