Vice President Joe Biden loves to keep promises. In his acclaimed memoir Promises To Keep I learned all about Biden’s love for toy guns (xi): “I’d have Saturday to play with my old friends from the neighborhood - baseball, basketball, cops and robbers” (a game he still plays some argue). “Between games, we’d head down toward Green Ridge Corners, stopping in at Handy Dandy for caps for our cap guns” (now banned in playgrounds, my guess).
What a remarkable memory. While campaigning for Obama on (or with) Katie Couric’s show, Biden’s memory was so remarkable that he even recalled FDR yapping on television in the pre-television days, to the astonishment of eighth grade history students.
I admittedly like to wonder how life was in the 1890s and 1950s. Today, though, Biden would be considered a bigot by progressives (xii): “Once we’d spent our limit on penny candy from Simmey’s, Charlie Roth, Larry Orr, Tommy Bell, and I would head toward the Roosie Theatre for the twelve-cent double feature – usually a pair of westerns or Tarzan.”
Animal rights campaigners please step away too: “If we had time to spare after the movies let out, we might stop in at Thompson’s market [not to be confused with Handy Dandy]. Mr. Thompson kept a live monkey in the store, so even if we couldn’t afford more candy, it was worth the stop.”
Confessed the sugar addict too: “We might linger in front of Evelyn and E-Paul’s, too, waiting for the aroma of handmade candy and ice cream to waft by.”
In Scranton, Pennsylvania (which reminds of The Office for some reason), Biden’s Uncles Jack and Boo-Boo (not monkeys) loved to talk serious politics. It was a real learner. Intriguingly though, Biden uses his personal history to make talking points for Rush Limbaugh (xiii):
They were Truman Democrats, working men, or sons of working men, but they had to admit Truman might have gone too far when he tried to take over Youngstown Steel. Probably the Supreme Court was right when they knocked him back. A president’s a president, not a dictator. It seemed un-American.
By the end of his prologue, I felt like I really knew the guy. I’m so glad we have the Vice President’s opinion on the record too, just in case President Obama pulls some kind of General Motors takeover.