Since A Presidents Story Too was published earlier this year, I have been asked the same question I was asked after the publication of A Presidents Story five years ago: “What possessed you to write a book about a bunch of unknown Presidents?” The answer harkens back to the simplest of gestures.
When I was seven years old I was spending time with my grandparents in southeast New Mexico as I did every summer of my youth—sometimes for a couple weeks, sometimes for a couple months. It was 1968 and Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey would square off in the presidential election that Fall. Being seven years old, I did not know who Richard Nixon or Hubert Humphrey were. I did have a vague understanding that President Lyndon Johnson had a big job.
My grandmother stopped at the Shell gas station in Carlsbad to fill up. This was in the days before you pumped your own gas. The station attendant “filled ‘er up” and then handed my grandmother a pamphlet about the Presidents and elections. In those days, gas stations and banks and other businesses were always giving away little odds and ends knowing that the world is filled with seven year olds who love getting free stuff. My grandmother passed the pamphlet to me and asked “Do you want that?” I, of course, said “Sure!”
We drove back out to my grandparents’ ranch and I spent the next few days poring over that little pamphlet. By the time my parents retrieved me and I returned to California, I could name all of the Presidents in order in less than a minute (a party trick my wife still makes me perform from time to time) along with knowing where each President was from, their political parties and their Vice Presidents. Since Nixon was Eisenhower’s Vice President and Humphrey was Johnson’s, I was now familiar with the two men who would be vying for the Presidency in the coming months.
Back home, my mother noted my new obsession. She was grocery shopping at Lucky Market shortly after my return and saw another election year promotion in the form of a set of books published by American Heritage. A new volume would come out each week so Mom’s weekly grocery store runs became the focal point of my young existence.
By the time I was eight years old I was devouring everything I could find on the Presidents, from our home encyclopedias to the Book of Knowledge to the biography section of the public library. While my friends played imaginary games with GI Joes, Hot Wheels or their sports heroes, I wrote little stories or drew pictures of U.S. Presidents. I collected miniature statues and other trinkets bearing the images of various Presidents. I am amazed that I never got beat up by my less historically inclined friends.
In fifth grade we studied American History and my teacher, Miss Brown, freely consulted with me on any and all President-related facts and figures. By eighth grade I was the recognized expert on the Presidents among the students and faculty of Hickory Elementary School. I routinely found ways to, uh, avoid being in class in high school so I could sit outside in the Southern California sun and read my latest President biography. In short, I was (and am) the consummate Presidents nerd.
As a result of my years of independent study, I developed an almost proprietary sense about the lives of these men, particularly the more obscure Presidents. As I was exposed to judgments about modern Presidents and their eventual place in history, I realized that most of those judgments were usually being made without any meaningful working knowledge of most of the Presidents. That was when the idea began to germinate to write about the lesser known Presidents in a style intended to inform and entertain. The advent of personal computers in the 1990s gave me the tool I needed to get started writing.
A Presidents Story and A Presidents Story Too did not result from a conviction that learning arcane details of the men who served as President and then writing about them would do something beyond allowing me to continue to do one of the things that gave me joy as a child. The books are the product of a journey of curiosity and exploration that my grandmother and mother unwittingly laid out for me. To some degree, I know part of my purpose was to honor those who blessed me, along with enjoying recounting what I absorbed in a unique way.
Like all legacies, my grandmother’s and mother’s legacies to me were unplanned and hardly seemed likely to spawn a “legacy” when they started. Similarly, I have no idea what form my legacy to my grandchildren will take. I’ve seen little evidence that there is much margin in trying to craft a legacy after the fact. Indeed, time spent attempting to construct a legacy runs the risk of missing that unplanned, perfectly-timed-random-moment that leads someone else to a career, or a passion, or a disposition to kindness, or even a song or a book. If that happens, it will be more than enough. If not, I will be none the wiser.