"Frankly, We Did Win This Election."

Trampling Terry Brennan's flower beds likely derailed a budding political career.

We all enjoy a nice conspiracy theory story every now and then. And, I’ve got a doozy for you, involving a long-ago election, and a former major college football coach, and a tennis ball lost in a bed of Japanese plants.

In the early 1970’s, my brother Jim and I played a lot of wiffle ball in the driveway of our family’s home in Kenilworth, a bedroom community located in Chicago’s North Shore. Wiffle balls, as you may know, don’t travel very far when hit, so, generally we were able to keep the ball within the field of play, including Leicester Road, at the end of the driveway. This “driveway ballgame” didn’t rise to the level of playing on the backyard “Field of Dreams” of our neighbor down the street, Trey Yelton; no, there was no cornfield from which Shoeless Joe Jackson, or any of his compadres could emerge, but, Trey did procure a bag of flour from his mother’s pantry, with which he lined the left-field and right-field foul lines.

But, back at our end of Leicester Road, sometimes we became bored with the limited trajectory of these batted wiffle balls, and craved a more expansive experience. No, we didn’t fire-up baseballs, because, you know, this was a residential neighborhood, with plenty of windows within batted-ball distance, and, even we knew that would have been wrong. Our solution was deploying a tennis ball, using a wooden bat (remember wooden bats?). We could pretend to be Ron Santo, or Jim Hickman, or Billy Williams, our revered Chicago Cubs’ crop of home run hitters, at that point in time (“Sweet-swinging Billy Williams” was my favorite - I know Ernie Banks was still around, with over 500 career home runs, but, he was in the twilight of his career at that point, and wasn’t the home run threat that he was in his younger years - I further recognize that Williams was a left-handed hitter, but, sometimes, when playing out childhood fantasies, one must suspend disbelief).

On occasion, we were able to connect solidly enough to clear Leicester Road, and land a tennis ball in our neighbor’s flower bed across the street, a garden which largely consisted of a Japanese ground-cover plant, quite popular in the North Shore, called, pachysandra. A sample pachysandra flower bed is pictured atop this column - as you can see, it is typically quite dense, and could easily gobble-up car keys, a midsize sedan, or, dare I say it, tennis balls. By the way, plunking a tennis ball in our neighbor’s pachysandra flower bed clearly constituted a home run, just as breaching the “Green Monster” at Fenway Park, or putting one onto Waveland Avenue, beyond Wrigley Field’s left-field stands, would have been.

Naturally, after the obligatory home run trot, we needed to retrieve the tennis ball, in order that the game might continue. So, Jim and I would wander across the street, and enter the pachysandra flower bed in search of the missing home-run ball. On one occasion, as we were tromping around in the pachysandra, our neighbor, Terry Brennan, happened upon us, and indicated to us, “Don’t worry, fellas, I’m sure that stuff will grow back.”

Now, I developed pretty solid sarcasm-detection instincts at a young age, and I immediately recognized that Terry was upset with us for trampling his flower bed. So, that was likely the end of the game for that day. The Brennans had lived across the street only for a short period of time at that point. Terry was a halfback at Notre Dame in the 1940’s, and had succeeded the legendary Frank Leahy as head football coach at Notre Dame in the mid-1950’s for a few years. By the time they moved to Kenilworth, Terry had become an investment banker in Chicago. And, he was a pretty nice guy. Looking back, I’m sure I would have been upset to encounter two knuckle-headed youngsters trampling my flower beds.

I gave little thought to this interaction, until a year or so later, when I found myself running for Student Council President of my elementary school, Joseph Sears School. This election was in the fall of 1973, and the quaint tradition back then regarding Student Council elections was to found your own political party, and brand it with a name guaranteed to resonate with the voters. Then, you and your team would craft posters, and buttons, and other political knick-knacks to distribute around school.

Curiously, my political party name was “Suds,” a nickname I had acquired in grade school - a sort-of contraction of my last name, Southern. So, this party name was slapped on all sorts of posters and buttons, including a giant poster featuring a crude drawing of a guy posed in a bathtub, surrounded by bath bubbles, with the headline, “Vote for Suds: He’ll clean up your student body!” Now, before you get yourself worked-up into a lather over this poster (see what I did there?), allow me to state unequivocally that this poster was designed freehand, and did not include the use of any live models, clothed or otherwise, including me, or any other individual, associated with this specific political campaign, or not. (I’m told by the Rule of Three legal department that this is a standard disclaimer in use by political campaigns throughout the country, so, as we enter this political season, keep that in mind - look for it).

As to the tagline, it’s quite common for political candidates of all stripes to deploy catchy campaign slogans in their promotional material - several which spring to mind include Herbert Hoover’s, “A chicken in every pot,” and Eisenhower’s pithy, “I like Ike,” and John F. Kennedy’s, “I banged Marilyn Monroe.” Actually, I’m kidding about that last one - it’s not so much a campaign slogan, as it is a Kennedy family motto - I think it appears on the Kennedy family crest, and I believe cheerleaders chanted some version of the slogan at touch-football games at Hyannisport.

I don’t recall specifically my campaign promises, but, given that we’re talking about a junior high school student council election in the fall of 1973, I can imagine that it might have included such things as: demanding that a Top 40 hits rotation be played over the loudspeaker system in the school after saying the Pledge of Allegiance every morning, including Elton John’s Bennie and the Jets, Edgar Winter’s Frankenstein (which, I think we can all agree right here and now, is the greatest rock and roll song ever!), and Tony Orlando & Dawn’s Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree; ensuring that bell bottoms were included in the approved school dress code; and that streakers wouldn’t be punished by school administrators for practicing their craft (those of you who don’t remember the streaking fad, go ahead and Google it - we’ll wait).

But, despite these commitments, and the promise to “. . .clean up your student body,” I lost the election. . .to a guy named Joe Brennan. That’s right: Terry’s son. I cannot recall the name of Joe’s political party, but it should have been “Golden Boy,” because Joe was a good-looking, blond-haired, star athlete, who, like Terry, was a pretty nice guy.

Clearly, Terry Brennan was the mastermind behind this “rigged election,” but, how high-up did this conspiracy go? Who else was involved? Father Hesburgh, the president of the University of Notre Dame at the time? “Rudy” Ruettiger, whose quest for football glory at Notre Dame was chronicled in the 1993 film, Rudy? The pope? Or, Philip K. Wrigley, the owner of the Chicago Cubs at the time? Maybe, Sadaharu Oh, the Japanese baseball star, whose 868 career home runs eclipses the totals logged by Ruth, Aaron, and Bonds? There’s no telling where this trail leads. My promise to you (no, I’m not promising a Top 40 hits rotation, or bell bottoms, or amnesty for streakers, or even to clean up your body, or anybody else’s body. . .not anymore) is that I will continue to seek the truth, and right this wrong from so many years ago - we can’t allow Terry Brennan’s pachysandra to win this battle.

Postscript

Joe Brennan resigned as Joseph Sears School Student Council President early in 1974, several months before Richard Nixon resigned as President of the United States on August 8, 1974. Joe neglected to attend Student Council meetings, and was asked to resign, or face impeachment, which, given Nixon’s travails, was a popular watercooler topic at the time. Student Council meetings were held during lunch hours, and perhaps Joe found that meeting-time inconvenient. He also appeared more interested in campaigning, rather than governing. Hmm. . .why does that sound familiar to me?

I have run for elective office only once more in my life: I won the election for vice-president of my local fraternity, Tau Kappa Epsilon, at the University of Kansas. In fairness, that political campaign consisted mostly of downing beers at various bars on Massachusetts Street, in Lawrence.

I think the valuable lesson we’ve all learned from this piece is that we should steer clear of Terry Brennan’s pachysandra.

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