So, my Mom is 79 years old.
She was born in 1932.
She was telling me today, that she remembers when her father got “laid off” and he walked his neighborhood in New York City taking fifty cents to string a clothesline in people’s backyards.
“AND he did a good job!” she added.

Then she said to me “He was still fighting back then”

See, that’s my grandpa John.
I’m named after him.
He died when I was about 11 years old.
He used to call me “The Champ” and when I was four or five, he gave me a pair of boxing gloves that would fit my little hands and he signed them.
“To the Champ” Jack Brady.
He used to fight under that name.
Jack Brady.
Can you get any more Irish than that?

He sparred with Jack Dempsey, and my grandpa was a BIG barrel chested Irishman, a hard drinking man, and a kick ass Democrat.
From what I've heard, he would work the neighborhood beer gardens and bars, and he would recruit people who would listen to him to vote for the Democratic party come election time.
If they gave him any shit, or if they spoke ill of the Democrats, I’m guessing he would kick their ass.
And then, either way, he would join them in a beer.
If you were with him, he was buyin’.
If not, then you were buyin’.

The year my Mom was born, Herbert Hoover's popularity was falling as voters felt he was unable to reverse the economic collapse.
Franklin D. Roosevelt used what he called Hoover's failure to deal with these problems as a platform for his own election, promising reform in his policy called the New Deal.

The “New Deal”
How cool was that?
He won by a landslide, and this was the first election in fifty six years in which the Democratic candidate won a majority of the popular vote.

I drove 127 miles each way today to mow my Mom’s lawn, which looked like the rough at the U.S. Open.
I was sitting in a chair in her garage in Florida, north of Tampa, sweating my ass off and trying not to have a heart attack at 56 years old.
My Mom told me that my Grandpa used to hang clotheslines for fifty cents.
And that he used to kick ass.

It occurs to me that my Grandpa had what we need right now.
And it also occurs to me that my Mom, who has been around since 1932 has some stories to tell if you hit her with the right questions.
Goddamn, when I asked her today if she knew what a “hedge fund” was she replied quickly “Yeah, it like hedging your bets, either way you win”.

I’ll continue to drive 127 miles each way to mow her lawn if she shares shit like this, and may I add that I love her more each day.