Edie Brickell & New Bohemians – "What I Am" (1988)

I'm not aware of too many things

I know what I know 

If you know what I mean

Every American president since James Madison has attended services at St. John’s Episcopal Church, which is located just across Lafayette Park from the White House.

Of all those presidents, George H. W. Bush – who died last week – was almost certainly the most considerate.

St. John's Church in 1816 (with the partially
burned White House in the background)

Bush, who was raised in the Episcopal Church, attended St. John’s with his wife, Barbara, fairly regularly during his four years in office.  But the Bushes almost never attended the 9:00 am or 11:00 am Sunday services, which attracted large numbers of worshippers.  

That was because Bush appreciated how disruptive it was for a sitting president to show up at one of those services.  The Secret Service had to clear St. John’s and search it prior to the Bushes entering the church, and all those who came to worship had to go through a metal detector before going inside.

Rather than inconvenience hundreds of St. John’s parishioners, the Bushes got up early and came to the 8:00 am service, which attracted only a handful of people.

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I know about all that because my late father-in-law was the rector of St. John’s during the Bush Administration.

He would get a call from the White House on Saturday night if the Bushes planned to come to St. John’s on Sunday.

Once he and my mother-in-law invited my oldest son – who was their oldest grandchild – to spend the night and go with them to the 8:00 am service, where he sat with his grandmother and the Bushes in the “president’s pew” that is reserved for the use of any U.S. president who worships at St. John’s.

Presidents often give small souvenirs to people they meet, and President Bush gave my son a tie clasp with the seal of the President of the United States on it.

The tie clasp was in a small cardboard box with a facsimile of Bush’s signature printed on its top, and was fitted into an indentation in a square piece of spongy plastic foam:

My son – who was seven or eight years old at the time – took the piece of foam out of the box for some reason and found that a folded five-dollar bill was hidden beneath it.

I have no idea if Bush routinely tucked a five-dollar bill beneath the Presidential tie clasps he gave away.  Maybe he did that only when a child was going to be the recipient.

Or maybe that five-dollar bill was President Bush’s emergency money.  You know, if he ever got separated from his Secret Service companions and had to take a taxi or bus back to the White House.

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It’s customary for newly-elected presidents to have an Inauguration Day service at St. John’s before they are sworn in.

My father-in-law pulled a few strings so I got to be one of the ushers for President Bush’s 1989 inaugural service.

The Rev. John C. Harper leaving St. John's
with the Bushes and Quayles (1989)

The Bushes and their many family members sat on the right side of the church.  The left side was reserved for the family of Vice President-elect Dan Quayle and his wife, Marilyn.  

I was assigned to usher on the left side.  I may have escorted a Quayle brother-in-law, an aunt and uncle, and a couple of second cousins to their pews, but no one more glamorous than that.

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George Herbert Walker Bush was the last World War II-era president.  He was a year older than my father, while the man who beat him in the 1992 election – Bill Clinton – was much closer to my age.

It was easy for me to respect Bush – his age and military service gave him a certain gravitas that was shared by other members of the “greatest generation.”

I couldn’t respect Bill Clinton in the same way.  After all, I had grown up with guys like Bill Clinton.  I knew what was going through his mind, because the same nonsense was going through my mind.  

George H. W. Bush taking
the oath of office in 1989

I looked at George Bush and saw my father.  I looked at Bill Clinton and saw myself and my high-school friends.  (You’re telling me that one of the guys I used to play spades and binge-drink cheap 3.2% beer with is going to be the president of the United States?  You must be kidding!)

George Bush getting oral sex from a 21-year-old intern in the Oval Office?  It was unthinkable.

But Bill Clinton doing that was no surprise.

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The day George H. W. Bush was inaugurated, today’s featured song occupied the #24 spot on the Billboard “Hot 100.”  It eventually climbed to #7, and spent a total of 19 weeks on the “Hot 100” chart.  

“What I Am” is ranked #77 on VH1’s list of the greatest one-hit wonders.  It was featured in an episode of Miami Vice, an episode of Doogie Howser, M.D., and an episode of Beavis and Butt-head.  Name another song that can make that claim!

Our 41st president moved to Texas after college, but Edie Brickell was born there.  She married Paul Simon on my birthday in 1992.

Click here to listen to “What I Am.”

Click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon:

Edie Brickell & New Bohemians – "What I Am" (1988)

What I am is what I am 

Are you what you are or . . . what?

I’ve been kind of a big deal my whole life.

My first birthday party was covered by the local newspaper, the Paragould (Arkansas) Daily Press.  (That's me in the crib – I've drawn a red circle around my head.)

Happy birthday to me!

In case the print in that photo is too small for you to read, here’s what it says:

Gary Hailey celebrated his first birthday Saturday afternoon with a party at the home of his parents, Mr. and Mrs. H. D. Hailey, 617 North 6th Street.  Gary is the grandson of Mrs. Cecil Hailey of Neosho, MO, and Mr. and Mrs. B. H. Cooper of Joplin, MO.

[NOTE: Yes, my paternal grandmother apparently spelled her first name “Cecil,” not “Cecile.”]

Pictured above at the gala event are Barbara Bishop, Steve Branch, Mickey Branch, Steve Bishop, Rita Spillman, and Sherry Tucker.  In the playpen are Eva Schreit and the little honoree.

Refreshments of birthday cake and cold drinks were served, and Gary received many nice gifts.

(Damn, that dude could write!  The article is not bylined, but I’m betting that its author ended up as a star reporter in Memphis or St. Louis – the two big cities nearest to Paragould – or maybe even Chicago.) 

*     *     *     *     *

I usually tell people that I spent the first 18 years of my life living in Joplin, Missouri.  

You should take that statement seriously, but not literally.  I was born in Joplin, but my parents and I moved to Paragould when I was a baby because the company my father worked for transferred him there.  (I moved back to Joplin about a year later, and stayed there until after I graduated from high school.)

I’m glad the newspaper article I quoted above included our Paragould street address, which enabled me to go to Google Earth and see what our old house looks like today — over 60 years later:

What our Paragould home looks like today

Paragould, which is the 19th-largest city in Arkansas, grew up around the intersection of two competing railroads – the Texas and St. Louis Railway, and the St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern Railway.  

The city’s name is a portmanteau word that combines the names of the presidents of those two railroads: James W. Paramore and Jay Gould.

Gould – the famous (or infamous) “robber baron” who controlled 15% of the trackage in the whole country at the time – objected to his name being second rather than first.  For a time he refused to use the name Paragould on his railroad’s timetables.

Jay Gould

When I recently asked my mother about why we didn’t stay in Paragould longer, she said that my father’s employer would have likely asked my father to move to California next, but they decided to return to Joplin instead, where he went back to a non-management job.  

My mother, who was an only child, was very close to her parents and her large extended family – my grandmother was one of seven kids, so my mother had plenty of aunts and uncles and cousins close by.  I’m sure she would have wanted no part of packing up the “little honoree” and moving to California, where she wouldn’t have known a soul.

When you hear a story like that, it makes you realize how your life could have been totally different.  I don’t know where in California my father might have been asked to transfer to, but being a teenager in the sixties in either the San Francisco or Los Angeles areas would have been very different than growing up in Joplin.  

Of course, it’s not certain that I would have been a world-famous rock musician or movie star if I had grown up in California instead of Missouri.  Likely, yes – but not certain.

Anyway, no use crying over spilled milk . . . and no use blaming my mother, who probably did me a favor by keeping me in Joplin.  After all, California in the sixties was full of dangerous temptations that might have proved irresistible to me – like LSD and braless hippie chicks, to name just a couple.

So thanks, Mom . . . thanks a lot!

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The previous 2 or 3 lines featured a bluegrass song from a 2013 Edie Brickell-Steve Martin album.

Today’s featured song, “What I Am,” was the lead single on the first Edie Brickell & New Bohemians album, Shooting Rubberbands at the Stars, which was released in 1988. 

“What I Am,” one of the most iconic songs of its era, made it all the way to #4 on the Billboard “Modern Rock Tracks” chart, and the album reached the same spot on the Billboard album chart.

The problem with having a big hit single and a big hit album right out of the box is that there’s nowhere to go but down . . . which is exactly where Edie and her band went.

Don’t cry for Edie Brickell, 2 or 3 lines readers.  In 1992, Edie (who was 26 at the time) married the 50-year-old Paul Simon.  She was his third wife.  (The late Carrie Fisher was wife number two.)

In 2014, Edie and Paul were arrested for disorderly conduct at their home in fancy-schmancy New Canaan, Connecticut, when an argument between the couple got out of hand.  The two were all smiles when they appeared in court a couple of days later, and held hands during their hearing.

Here’s “What I Am," which thinks it's a cool song pretending to be an uncool song . . . but which is really an uncool song pretending to be a cool song:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: