So I land in Dallas at Love Field and my Conservative political cartoonist friend Bill is picking me up and sends me a text saying there’s a huge traffic jam outside and they won’t let him wait at the curb so he’s doing laps around the airport and I should text him when I get my bag and I’m ready to go.
So I send back this text:
“Got it.”
(As in: “I understand.”)
But Bill reads:
“Got it.”
(As in: “I’ve got my bag.”)
So thinking I’ve already got my bag, Bill gets in line in an airport traffic jam that resembles the one in Die Hard 2 (which pretty much sucks compared to the Greatest Christmas Movie of All-Time, Die Hard) so he’s not going anywhere and meanwhile I’m finally out on the sidewalk, dragging a suitcase, looking for the Giant-Ass White Pickup Bill drives because apparently when you live in a ranch house located in a suburb of Dallas and draw funny pictures for a living, you never know when you might need to pull a tree stump out of the ground or move a load of heifers or take bales of hay out to the South 40.
(The above picture is not actually Bill’s truck, but I bet he wishes it was.)
Guys who feel the need to drive Giant-Ass Pickups even though they never participate in Giant-Ass Pickup-related activities make me think they’re compensating for something or just like the rugged he-man image driving a vehicle with its own zip code projects, but who am I to talk: I own three pairs of cowboy boots just because I like the way they look even though the last time I was on a horse Richard Nixon was President.
Anyway…
At this point I’m looking for Bill in the Airport Demolition Derby and spot a Giant-Ass White pickup, driven by a bald guy with glasses, so I wave at him and he waves back and having found my ride I drag my suitcase through the traffic jam and open up one of his back doors because Texas State Law requires pickups to have a minimum of four and toss my suitcase inside and “Bill” says, “Ex-cuse me” in one of those pissy voices that actually mean: “Just what the hell are you doing?”
And I look up and it’s not Bill.
Turns out I tried to climb inside a complete stranger’s pickup and meanwhile Bill (yet another bald guy with glasses in a Giant-Ass White Pickup) is a few cars back, laughing his ass off at what a dumb shit his Liberal buddy is and frankly, he has a point.
But in my defense…
Before we leave the airport I spot four more Giant-Ass White Pickups driven by bald guys with glasses, so if that describes your husband who you believe faked his death and abandoned you and your nine kids, you might want to look for him in Dallas and I’d suggest starting your search at Love Field.
Car horns
So now we’re headed for Bill’s house, but we’re fighting Dallas rush hour traffic which apparently starts about three minutes after lunch and Bill’s honking his horn at people like he’s getting paid per honk and I say:
“You’re an angry driver.”
And Bill’s well-reasoned counter-argument is:
“Shut the fuck up.”
So then we argue about the relative importance of a vehicle’s horn and he says, “So you never honk at anybody?” and I say I’m not even sure my car has a horn.
I’m not that impatient and don’t have a hair-trigger temper (unlike some Texans I could name) so that means I don’t feel the need to honk at somebody in front of me .02 seconds after a light turns green.
Plus I don’t honk at anybody because – as we’ve recently learned – people are batshit crazy and you don’t know who’s packing a handgun and a bad attitude, which reminds me of the time Bill and I visited Boston.
Cursing at random strangers
On that East Coast visit I had to do everything but shoot Bill with a tranquilizer dart to keep him from getting out of the car and fighting some guy because the guy said “fuck you” over some now-forgotten issue which wasn’t the first time we heard a “fuck you” on that trip and Bill said people in Boston dropped “fuck yous” on each other left and right like it meant nothing (“Could you pass the salt…and by the way…fuck you”) but if you said “fuck you” in Texas it meant you wanted to fight.
I pointed out we weren’t in Texas and may have added “so fuck you.”
Saying grace…
Next up on our fun-filled schedule was the Texas 6A State High School Football Championship and the above picture is not the Dallas Cowboys, it’s halftime at a high school football game and a pretty good indication of how seriously Texas takes their football and I believe the only reason they held the game in AT&T Stadium was because the Vatican was unavailable.
Anyway…
Before the game we’re having dinner with Bill’s girlfriend and her daughter and the daughter’s boyfriend and the food comes, but I’m looking down at my phone and Bill says something and when I look up he’s holding his hand out and I say I’m not letting him look at my phone and he says no, you knucklehead, we’re saying grace and the boyfriend is reaching across the table to hold my other hand like we need to complete the circuit or God won’t listen because apparently the Almighty has a Party-Lines Only policy.
So to keep everybody but me from being uncomfortable I hold hands, but after dinner’s over and we’re walking out of the restaurant I tell Bill to never do that to me again and he starts laughing and says he only did it to piss me off.
I tell him if there’s a next time, after I hold hands and hear someone say grace I’m going to say:
“And now I’d like you all to join me in a few Satanic Chants; Oh, Great Beelzebub, bless this pulled pork sandwich with a side of potato salad and barbequed beans we are about to receive.”
And see how they like it.
I ask if he says grace before every meal and Bill says he prays all the time and I say, “Good…because I’m pretty sure you’re going to Hell.”
Screwing with your buddy
On the other hand, Bill probably owes me one because we once gave a speech at Texas Tech and I showed my Liberal cartoons and the audience reacted like they’d just been injected with a quart of Nyquil and then as I left the stage and Bill came on, he leaned in and said:
“See? That Liberal shit don’t fly down here.”
And then Bill showed his Conservative cartoons and got the same crappy reaction and when you’re dying on stage you just want to get off the stage as quickly as possible, but since I was controlling his cartoon slide show I thought it was funny to go slow as possible and he’d show a cartoon that got the same reaction you’d get from telling a knock-knock joke to a three-day-old corpse and I’d call out, “Talk about the background art in this one” to prolong his agony, which I thought was hilarious and he was looking at me like, “I’m going to kick your ass the second I get off the stage.”
Speaking of which…
Paying the tab
So Bill’s got this policy that when I visit I’m his guest and he should pay for everything I eat or drink or possibly snort which is OK up to the point where he spends as much money as I did to get there, but then I feel like I should pay for something and we went to a hamburger joint and I got out a $50 bill before he could get to his credit card.
Bill was mad about it and said I did it just to piss him off (which is only about 97.8 percent true) and somebody needed to kick my ass so I’m assuming if it had actually been an expensive restaurant, the same somebody would probably need to run me over with a Giant-Ass Pickup (probably driven by a bald guy with glasses) and part of the fun of pissing Bill off is he says the kind of stuff you only hear in Texas like:
“You make me want to dip snuff.”
Or…
“You’d make a freight train take a dirt road.”
Neither of which I fully understand; both of which make me laugh.
Today’s lesson and this time I actually think there is one
So as you might have already figured out, Bill’s a Conservative and I’m a Liberal and he tells me all the stuff I write and draw about Donald Trump and other Conservatives pisses him off and I say who’s making you read it and he says he doesn’t read it and I say then how do you know what I wrote or drew and these kind of Two Stooges arguments have been going on since we first met in 1979 and on more than one occasion, someone listening to us bicker has said:
“Jesus, you two are like an old married couple.”
Which is pretty much true and reminds me that anytime someone meets me and decides to let me know we’re not on the same political page by saying:
“Y’know, I don’t agree with everything you say.”
I think and/or say:
“So who do you agree with 100 percent of the time? And it’s probably not your wife and yet you’re still married to her.”
(The above picture is a Bill Clinton light switch located in Bill’s living room and even though I voted for Clinton twice, this stupid light switch still makes me laugh.)
So it is possible to have fundamental disagreements and still stayed married or have a friendship and maybe political cartoonists are more used to dealing with this issue because we have to say what we think out loud and, if we’re any good at our jobs, eventually we’ll piss off everybody we know because everybody knows what we think and what we think generally pisses off half of America and all we get to do is pick which half.
When people tell me I’m controversial I say everybody’s controversial, but other people can keep their views on handgun control or abortion or Gay marriage or the Pope’s wardrobe private.
But these days you can tell what someone thinks about wearing a mask just by looking at their face and now people are pissed off at each other and maybe they should be (I’ve got a problem with someone who’s unvaccinated risking other people’s health and if I’d known Charles Manson I probably wouldn’t have been able to overlook some of his bad habits), but Bill and I have stayed friends for 42 years by focusing on the areas in which we agree like football and food and taking every chance possible to screw around with a buddy and we don’t spend much time or energy pissing on each other’s shoes about politics because we know we’re never going to agree so why get started down that road.
And I think it’s safe to say any time Bill and I are role models for the rest of the country, you know (as Bill would say) the rest of the country is:
“Down the shitter like ol’ Tex Ritter.”
So despite our differences (which I’ll continue to point out and ridicule because it’s my job) try to get along with people and avoid topics on which you’ll never agree and for God’s Sake, quit honking your goddamn horn so much.
My best friend and I met in kindergarten in 1970 and we are the same as you and Bill. She's a Trumpie and I'm a pinko commie radical. 😀 sometimes life is strange.
Merry Xmas, Lee. From another one who doesn't pray and feels stupid holding hands listening to people thank a dude I don't believe in for feeding us when I've got the damn Discover receipt right here in my purse.