On Vacation with Big Daddy and Uncle Ike

Greetings from Cape Charles, Virginia! Yes, yes, I am supposed to be on vacation and the missus has forbidden blogging. But nothing can come between myself and my beloved readers!


Well, OK, here is the real truth. I am rather bored here. Sure, there is plenty of seafood, lots of deserted beaches and many opportunities for weight-gaining laziness. But the people here spend all their time frolicking in the sun, drinking wine and eating crab soup. There is little political gossip of any sort. It is the kind of place where the person who catches the biggest fish gets to be the state delegate. These people need to get a life!

So I walked into the nearest bar the other night (an activity for which I do not need to be on vacation) and asked for the best local blog. The bartender replied, “Never heard of that. How do you mix one?” Eventually the patrons came to understand that I am an (unpaid) observer of Maryland politics. One of them asked me to explain how our politics works. So I told them the following story.


Maryland has a great big ruling family and at its head is an old southern gentleman named Big Daddy. Yes, he lets his little brother act like the nominal head of the family, but everyone knows Big Daddy is the Boss. And Big Daddy has many, many children and nieces and nephews. In fact, the family has lots of branches and each of them has their own family businesses. Big Daddy’s role is to collect the proceeds from each of these businesses and send them back to all the branches of the family so that everyone is adequately fed. Big Daddy also protects the children from mean old King George and all those awful mini-Georges that sometimes break into the family estate.

The problem is that many of the family businesses don’t make a lot of money. One branch of the family invested in manufacturing and shipbuilding, but that hasn’t worked out. Another branch built housing for the workers who are employed by the really, really big business next door. But they couldn’t maintain the accommodations very well and many of those workers would rather live somewhere else. Worst of all, some of the children got a bit greedy and took a little extra on the side. Big Daddy has to work far too hard to keep them in line, or at least to make sure that everybody else gets their fair cut!

But Uncle Ike’s branch of the family has been doing quite well. They have set up a giant conglomerate with biotech, R&D, construction and health care subsidiaries and have snagged lots of contracts from the really, really big business next door. Big Daddy loves the giant checks rich old Uncle Ike sends in because they help him feed the rest of the family.

One day Uncle Ike came to see Big Daddy with some bad news. His branch of the family had made some bad real estate investments and the other businesses weren’t doing as well as they had been. So Uncle Ike explained that the checks he was sending would have to be a little smaller. Furthermore, Uncle Ike’s costs were going up and the checks coming back down from Big Daddy were not keeping pace. Things were getting so bad that Uncle Ike said he might have to sell off some of his mansions! (Nobody really believed any of the mansions would be sold but perhaps some of the servants’ quarters would have to be cut back.)

This was horrible, thought Big Daddy. What would happen to the rest of the family? Some of the branches might start going after each other for more money. Worst of all, some of them would have to learn how to pay their own bills. What a calamity!

But because everyone in the family has such love for Big Daddy… err, excuse me. Let’s back up. Because no one in the family can imagine life without Big Daddy, they believe that he will figure out how to get out of this jam. After all, there’s really no choice but to believe that things will be better, right? Big Daddy has suggested going into the gambling business. Not everyone believes that is the way to go. But one way or another, the ruling family will stick together and feed everybody just like they always have. It’s not as if all those rotten mini-Georges will develop any bright ideas.

So I asked the rest of the bar what they thought of this tale and all I heard was, “Zzzzz....” Everyone was fast asleep! And I finally discovered one thing that the residents of Cape Charles and all my MPW readers back home had in common: the same reaction to my story-telling.

See you next week!