“They laughed when I sat down to play.”---John Caples
Everyone, they say, loves an underdog. The flyweight kid who takes on the neighborhood bully, the dead-broke high-school teacher who challenges a corrupt incumbent in the local mayoralty election, the has-been prizefighter who gets a shot at the champ when the scheduled opponent suffers an inconvenient bout of whooping cough. Truth be told, however, everybody mainly loves an underdog when he is successful.
They laughed when Buster Douglas walked into the ring to face the supposedly invulnerable Mike Tyson, when the 1980 American Olympic hockey team lined up against the unbeatable Russians, when the kid with the slingshot took aim at the laughing Goliath. Truman beat Dewey? Not a chance! What were the Vegas odds on the Roman Empire’s collapse? The fall of the Shah of Iran? The made-for-TV movie Crash winning an Academy Award for Best Picture? It’s a short walk from Ridicule to Reknown, but the bridge is narrow and the chasm deep.
So the Killeen For President campaign goes on, enlisting a single voter here, another there, while critics scoff and opponents sleep. Killer bees build a gigantic hive but noone notices until the swarm moves in and the buzzing gets extreme. “We never saw it coming!” said Yeh Chia-ni of the Great Tsunami which wiped out many parts of Southeast Asia in 2004. A good slogan for the enemy camps when the American presidential election of 2020 is over. The overconfident never consider the possibility that the sky really is falling.
Honest Abe
The list of severe underdogs who prevailed begins with Abraham Lincoln, born in Kentucky in 1809, the son of an uneducated but relatively successful father named Tom. Angry and frustrated that the laws of his state did not protect him from people out to poach his land, Tom Lincoln moved the family to Perry County, Indiana. Abe later described life there as “a fight with trees and logs and grubs.”
When young Lincoln was about seven, a school opened nine miles away. His mother, Nancy, insisted Abe and his sister Sarah be allowed to attend. At best, the walk to school would have taken 2.5 to 3 hours, so the importance of education was impressed on the Lincoln children. Fortunately for the family shoe budget, the place didn’t last long.
When Abe was nine, Nancy was stricken with “milk sickness,” a scourge of the times, and perished. Tom was overwhelmed by the need to hunt daily while still trying to cultivate the land and manage two children. Ultimately, he felt it necessary to leave the kids alone while he returned to Kentucky to find a new wife. They subsisted on dried berries which Nancy had salted away. A neighbor who checked on the children reported them to be “skinny, filthy and the house was in terrible condition.” Tom’s absence lasted a long six months, convincing Abe and Sarah they’d been abandoned, but eventually he returned with Sarah Bush Johnson, a mother of three, who did her best to teach Abe to read and write.
At age 22, Abe Lincoln move to New Salem, Illinois and began a business which failed. In 1832, he ran for the state legislature and was defeated, following which he lost his job. He attempted to gain entrance to law school but failed to get in. In 1833, he borrowed money from a friend to start another business but by the end of that year was bankrupt. Lincoln spent the next 17 years of his life paying off the debt. And you think Nixon had it rough. Lincoln’s political persistence finally paid off in 1834 when he ran for the legislature again and won. Whoop-de-doo, maybe the tide had finally turned!
Nope, not yet. In 1835, Abe was engaged to be married. His intended promptly up and died. Lincoln finally had a nervous breakdown and was in bed for six months. Who wouldn’t be? Nonetheless, in 1938 he was back seeking to become speaker of the state legislature. He lost, of course. In 1840, he sought to become an elector. Curses, foiled again. Lincoln stubbornly ran for Congress in 1843. Do we really need to tell you the result? Are you beginning to see a trend in this man’s life?
However, when all seemed lost, Abraham Lincoln finally turned the tables and was elected to Congress in 1846. His merriment was short-lived. He lost again in 1848, was defeated in a Senate race in 1854 and made a failing try for the vice-presidential nomination in 1856, amassing less than 100 votes. In 1858, he ran for the Senate and lost again. Is this man incapable of taking a hint? Is it not obvious the Fates are working mightily against him? Confronted with the weight of the powers arrayed against him, Abe Lincoln just smiled. And was elected President of the United States in 1860. As they say in Triteville, go figure.
Finger-Lickin’ Good
Every decent cook has a secret recipe to die for. “You should open a restaurant,” his friends proclaim. “This stuff would sell like hotcakes!” Yeah. Right. Colonel Harland Sanders heard this sort of thing all the time, so at 60 years of age he traveled far and wide trying to market his wonderful chicken recipe to restaurants. Legend has it he was rejected over a thousand times, but Colonel Sanders was nothing if not persistent. He’d spend days at a restaurant, peddling his chicken technique, cooking for customers, often sleeping in the back of his car. Finally, the dam broke. At 73 years old, Sanders sold his Kentucky Fried Chicken business for $2 million. It might not seem like all that much to you, but when you’re 73 it buys a lot of Barcaloungers.
Who’s The Leader Of The Club That’s Made For You And Me?
Everybody knows Walt Disney. He’s the guy who created Orlando, without whom the place would not be the wonderful crime-ridden Metropolis it is today. But Walt wasn’t always so lucky. Born in Chicago in 1901 and raised in Missouri, Disney was the fourth son among five siblings. His father, Elias, was a tough trail boss, abusive and domineering, as he tried to make ends meet for his brood. Walt’s escape from the family wars was a retreat into drawing as he watched his older brothers, one after another, run away from home. Eventually, he lied about his age, joined the U.S. Ambulance Service and became a driver during World War I.
When he got home from the war, Disney got a job as an apprentice at a Kansas City commercial art studio. Soon after, he and his older brother Roy launched their own cartoon business, Laugh-O-Gram Studios in 1920, but the company went bankrupt a couple of years later. With the loss of LOG and down to a shriveling $40 to his name, Disney fled to Los Angeles to try his hand at an acting career. He promptly went down in flames. In the process of exploring L.A., however, he discovered there were no animation studios there, nor even in the rest of California. He somehow convinced Roy the Optimist to come West and give it another try. Not long after, Disney had his first major success with Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.
Oswald might have been lucky, but not Disney. Traveling to New York to renegotiate his contract, he discovered that his producer had swiped his team of animators from right under his nose and he also no longer had any legal rights to Oswald. What’s a flailing cartoonist to do but walk away and start again? On the train ride back to Los Angeles, however, Walt created Mickey Mouse. Oh boy! Everything’s going to be great now, right? Not so fast, my friend.
After barely skirting the poorhouse several times, Disney finally brought Mickey Mouse to life on film in the late 1920s and rose to the top of his industry. Not that it was easy. Unenthusiastic bankers had rejected his creation over 300 times before he found a believer. Even with Mickey flying high, Walt had his crosses to bear. He was grossly overworked and tensions with his employer (who rudely stole his best animator from him) let to Disney having a nervous breakdown. What’s with these creepy sellout animators, anyway? The time off to recuperate helped turn the tide, however. During his recuperation, Disney developed a full-length animation feature called Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937. Walt Disney also had the foresight to turn to television early despite pressures from the film industry to stay with the silver screen. His gamble paid off with TV shows like The Mickey Mouse Club and Davy Crockett, blockbuster successes which raised enough capital to create his ultimate monster venture, Disneyland. Years earlier, nobody would have given a plugged nickel for his chances, but Walt showed ‘em. He turned out to be even more fortunate than Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.
Sorry, Mr. Einstein, But We Don’t Think So.
After one of film icon Fred Astaire’s first screen tests, a studio executive wrote, “Can’t sing. Can’t act. Slightly balding. Can dance a little.” The exec could probably make a few bucks from the original copy of that review. Charles Darwin was considered an average student, but no medical school candidate. He gave up on his penchant for a career in medicine and was going to school to become a parson before becoming obsessed with nature’s mysteries and penning “On the Origin of Species.” Are you a starving artist who has given up hope? Maybe you should reconsider. Vincent Van Gogh only sold one painting in his life (The Red Vineyard) and the sale was just months before his death. Dr. Seuss had his first book rejected by 27 stoopid publishers. Lucille Ball was once known as The Queen of B Movies.
Winston Churchill, whose grit and oratory probably saved England in World War II, was estranged from his political party over ideological disagreements during the period from 1929 to 1939. Good thing someone kept his phone number. Stephen King became so disillusioned with his attempts to write the novel Carrie that he threw away the entire first draft. Saul Bellow’s college English professor, the famed Norman Maclean, said he showed no signs of literary greatness and ultimately dismissed him as “a dud.” “You’re not APPLYING yourself, Mr. Bellow!”
Oprah Winfrey was fired from her first television job as an anchor in Baltimore for getting “too emotionally involved in her stories.” Stephen Spielberg was rejected by the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts multiple times. Sir Isaac Newton was pulled out of school by his mother to run the family farm. He failed miserably. Thomas Edison’s teachers told him he was “too stupid to learn anything.” A young Henry Ford ruined his reputation with a couple of failed automobile businesses. And a new kid named Jay-Z couldn’t get any record label to sign him. Okay, that one we understand.
So scoff at the neophyte Killeen political campaign at your own risk. Stranger things have happened than the meteoric rise of a new Democratic presidential candidate. One of those strange things is pacing the White House corridors right now.
That’s all, folks….
bill.killeen094@gmail.com
