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:

Electric Prunes – "Sold to the Highest Bidder" (1967)

Sold, sold, sold

To the highest bidder

Invaluable is the world’s leading online marketplace for fine art, antiques, and collectible.   In 2015, Invaluable partnered with auction houses in 52 countries to provide online bidding in over 17,000 auctions.

You can click here to browse Invaluable's auctions.

The folks at Invaluable keep me informed about auctions that they think might be of interest to 2 or 3 lines.  Last week, they tipped me off to a University Archives auction of letters, books, and photographs autographed by American Presidents, gangsters, artists, astronauts, and other notable folks, as well as a few non-autographed items.

Here are a few of the more interesting items in that auction – all of which are likely to be available for a very reasonable price.

Lot 7 in the auction is a signed photo of Apollo 11 astronaut Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin wearing his NASA spacesuit:

Buzz Aldrin

Lot 9 is a similar autographed photo of Neil Armstrong, who was the mission commander of Apollo 11:

Neil Armstrong

The estimate for the Aldrin photo is $300 to $400, while Armstrong’s picture is expected to go for $900 to $1000.  Both men walked on the moon, but Armstrong walked on it first – I assume that’s why his photo is likely to attract a higher winning bid.

Lot 10 is a very different Armstrong item – a 2007 letter to his classmate, Doris “Punky” Weber, accepting an invitation to attend the upcoming 60th reunion of the class of 1947 of Blume High School, which was located in Wapakoneta, Ohio.

Invaluable thinks lot 10 will go for $600 to $800:

"Dear Punky"

Moe Berg was a major-league catcher in the 1920s and 1930s who joined the U. S. Office of Strategic Services (which later became the CIA) in 1943 and parachuted into Yugoslavia to gather intelligence about the various groups who were fighting the Nazis.  Thanks to his successful completion of that and several other missions, Berg was offered the Medal of Freedom – an award established by President Truman to honor civilians whose efforts helped the U.S. and its allies win the war.  (Berg was one of only 33 people to be offered the medal.)  

Lot 14 in the auction is a handwritten draft letter (estimated sale price: $1200 to $1500) from Berg rejecting the medal:

(Thanks, but no thanks)

No one is sure why Berg turned down the award.  He was a very smart guy – he graduated from Princeton and Columbia Law School, spoke several languages, and read 10 newspapers a day – but was described as “the strangest man ever to play baseball” by Casey Stengel, who was quite possibly the second strangest man ever to play baseball.  

(By the way, a movie based on The Catcher Was a Spy, Nicholas Dawidoff’s biography of Berg, is expected to be released later this year.  Paul Rudd will play Berg.)

Lot 23 consists of two posh robes – one for a man, one for a woman – given to President George H. W. Bush by the Emir of Kuwait in gratitude for American support of Kuwait in the first Gulf War:

Invaluable thinks the two robes will sell for $1000 to $1200, which sounds like a bargain to me – I bet you’d have to spend that much or more to get equally fancy robes at Neiman-Marcus, and those robes wouldn’t have the impressive historical pedigree that the Lot 23 robes have.  Put one of these bad boys on over your pajamas before you go outside to retrieve your morning newspaper and you can best believe your neighbors will be impressed.

Lot 50 is a wanted poster for John Dillinger issued by the U. S. Department of Justice in 1934.    You should be able to snag this poster or a similar one for Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow (Lot 45) for a mere $400 to $500:

Wanted: John Dillinger

The big bargain of the auction may be Lot 194, which is a check in the amount of $25 made out by sex symbol Mae West to her longtime assistant, Larry Lee.  Invaluable believes that the winning bid for this item will be between $100 and $150:

"I only like two kinds of men:
domestic and imported"

If you’d like to check out any of the 200-odd lots being offered, click here to go to the website for the auction, which begins at 10:30 am tomorrow – Tuesday, January 24.

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The Electric Prunes’ biggest hit was “I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night),” which was released on their eponymous debut album in 1967.  It and today’s featured song, “Sold to the Highest Bidder,” were both penned by a female songwriting duo, Annette Tucker and Nancie Martz.  

Here’s “Sold to the Highest Bidder”:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: