Walking with purpose out of the snowy night cornfield where my plane went down on February 3rd 1959 and I died just outside of Clear Lake Iowa, I boarded the Sarah Palin bus for the trip to Spirit Lake where she was off to sell books and deliver her message.
Why? Because I’ve come across Sarah Palin before. Even now. She might have a different face, a different voice; she might look like a whole different person. But I know her. She’s always been here. And you can trust me when I tell you I have it on the highest authority that she always will be here.
So when she comes to Clear Lake, Spirit Lake, or anywhere in Iowa, I take a look. If only to just let her feel somehow in the tingling breeze at the back of her neck; that I am watching her.
I’m a musician. You might know my name. Might not. Might not know my music. Doesn’t matter. What matters is that when some folks hear the words “Clear Lake Iowa,” or when folks think about someplace called “Spirit Lake,” they think of me. So I’m here. I’m everywhere they still play my music. But I’m also here in Iowa. So when the likes of a Sarah Palin shows up to sell her books, I pay attention. There are other places I could be. Tonight there is a concert. Johnny Cash is playing. And I never miss him. But I couldn’t miss what was happening here either. So I looked toward their bus.
The bus was idling by the side of the road when I walked up to it. Three black SUV’s, bulletproof I noticed, all with tinted windows, had just driven up behind the bus. The lady, Sarah Palin, got out of the vehicle in the middle and immediately, even on this lost, snowy road with no one in sight, she was surrounded by men in long coats scanning the horizon and looking for trouble.
Of course none of them saw me.
We all climbed up on to the bus. They all were talking about how warm it was. Sarah barked out “Coffee!” and immediately there was a cup in her left hand.
Then they all went to a table in the back of the bus and sat down. One lady started working on Sarah Palin’s hair. Another on her nails. And as they all had their meeting, the tones in their voices were like military marches. Somber and serious. Lock step marching forward. These were very smart people. None of them were smiling. All of them were looking at little computers in their hands even when they talked. Every now and then, Sarah Palin would say something like, “I need more!” or “You know we have people we all answer to.” But through it all no one smiled. That’s when I saw the first difference between these people and my music. With these people, nothing was fun.
With my music, we started off with fun.
As the bus rolled toward town, it seemed like they were all coming up with little phrases for her to say. Kinda like I do when I write songs. But as I kept listening hard to all these little phrases they came up with, I figured out the second big difference between these people and me. Everything they said meant something else! It was as if they had all decided to talk in some sort of code where everything they said meant the opposite! They said, “Cut taxes” which meant, “Give me money.” They said “Freedom” which meant, “Start a war.” And it went on.
These people were working on destroying the very meaning of words! These people were killing words! Exactly the opposite of my songs.
Mile or so down the road, we came to town. Big crowd. Folks all excited as she stepped off the bus. But then she started talking. And that’s when I really saw the evil that was going on here. See, when I’d sing a song, I’d mostly do it to lift someone’s spirit. Even my sad songs. I wrote them and I sang them so sad folks wouldn’t feel so alone. But what she was doing was the total opposite.
She was trying to scare people.
Oh she did it with a smile. She was laughing now. Not like back on the bus. As she talked in front of people, she seemed to get dumber and dumber. I knew that was a lie because I had seen how smart she was back in the bus. But where this was all going was: she was doing her best to make people afraid.
Not afraid on the outside. Afraid on the inside. Like when you walk away from what somebody just said to you and you suddenly realize that you are really, really scared. And you didn’t know why. That kind of scared.
That was about the size of it. There were numbers of people; there were TV cameras, folks writing about her. You can find all that other places.
That’s not what I came here to tell you about.
What I came to say are the three things she did that were so very, very, different than the way I wrote and sang my songs. First, she didn’t have any fun. Second, she killed the words. And finally, she did her very best to scare all the people—making them feel good when she scared them. Like a roller coaster of evil. But underneath still scaring them.
She finished up in Spirit Lake. Back on the bus to leave the city limits, then back to the SUV’s to take her to the airport where she scurried up the stairs inside her private jet.
That was the last I saw of her. Scurrying up those stairs to her jet. So I looked real hard at the back of her neck. Just to make sure she knew I was watching her. And always would. No matter what little town she tried to terrify.
And as I stared hard those last few moments, I saw her scratch the back of her neck, as if she could make my stare go away. She scratched hard. Like she had something really itchy in her collar. Then she turned and looked out at my snowy cornfields here in Iowa. I could see it in her eyes. She would not give up. She’d never give up.
But she knew that I was watching her.