Listen: Billy Pilgrim is Unstuck in Time

Dear readers,

Watching the candidates for president debate last week brought back memories of past debates. I came unstuck in time just like the protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, in Kurt Vonnegut’s novel, Slaughterhouse Five. 

This week’s time travel will take us back to a time when the Democrats and Republicans had to share the stage with the candidate from the Reform Party of the United States of America.

But first, just like Paul Harvey always snuck in a plug for True Value Hardware, I must do likewise for this year’s annual fundraiser for our Grover Museum.

When: Sept. 28 at 6 p.m. at the Civic Center. (That’s Paul Cross Gym for you old-timers).

What: a salute to the British Invasion, live music of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Animals etc. including food by Mel, a cash bar, a silent auction and as Ron Popeil would say “but wait, there’s more!”  Check out the Grover Museum website “events” for more information and tickets.

Now let’s ask Mr. Peabody to have his boy Sherman set the Wayback machine to the time when the Reform Party of the United States of America had a candidate running for president.

Ross Perot was that candidate. If you were alive in 1992, you would definitely remember him. Some of you might have even liked Perot. I did. He wasn’t the usual politician.

Ross Perot was a military man, having graduated from the Naval Academy. After the service, he worked for IBM briefly and then started his own computer company.  Ross was a billionaire businessman with ears as big as Texas.

He didn’t run the usual one-minute TV commercials with patriotic music and the American flag in the background. No, Ross bought up half-hour TV time slots. Like Ron Popeil selling his rotisseries (set it and forget it), Ross pitched his ideas for America.

I’ll get to those ideas in a minute. First, let’s take a look at what America was like in the early 1990s.

Al Gore had already invented the “Information Superhighway” that we all now call the Internet. People still relied on print media for information and entertainment. 

Sports Illustrated was published weekly. So, for 51 weeks men had to pretend to read about sports until the arrival of the Swimsuit Edition.  Kathy Ireland and Paulina Porizkova were a couple of the featured models. Lizzo wouldn’t make the cut in the 1990s. It would be years before body positivity was invented. 

Just as both Nostradamus and Faith Popcorn predicted “Grunge” arrived. Nirvana and Pearl Jam provided the music. All the cool kids were wearing flannel shirts, ripped jeans and Doc Martens combat boots.

I had begun saving for my retirement by investing in Beanie Babies. I had read somewhere that the value of Beanie Babies was almost guaranteed to keep going up. I must have not seen the “almost.” Anyway, you can’t win them all.

Now let’s get back to Ross.

Ross Perot, the billionaire businessman and independent presidential candidate, made quite a splash during that 1992 U.S. presidential campaign. He would get out his charts and graphs and with his pointer in hand would explain his vision for America. Perot famously warned us about the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Ross looked into the camera and told the American people that if NAFTA passed, they would hear “a giant sucking sound” as all of our manufacturing jobs went to Mexico.

Maybe folks should have paid more attention to Ross when he got out his charts and pointer. I think he was right.

See you all next week, same Schwinn time, same Schwinn channel.

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