Max Frost and the Troopers – "Fourteen or Fight!" (1968)

Gettin’ old

Lookin’ old

That’s a drag now!

(You can say that again!)

*     *     *     *     *

On November 8, Maxwell Frost was elected to represent the 10th congressional district of Florida in the U.S. House of Representatives.

I wasn’t aware of Congressman-elect Frost’s victory until I heard President Biden mention him in his post-election press conference.

Biden described Frost as the youngest person ever elected to Congress.  He was almost right – Frost was actually the second youngest Congressman-elect.

*     *     *     *     *

The youngest person ever elected to Congress was actually William Charles Cole Claiborne of Tennessee, who was only 22 when he was elected to Congress in 1797.  At least that’s what the official House of Representatives website says – other sources report that Claiborne was 23 or perhaps 24 when he took the oath of office. 

In any event, the U.S. Constitution provides that members of the House of Representatives must be at least 25 years of age – which Claiborne clearly was not.  That fact didn’t seem to have bothered the members of the House, who chose to seat Claiborne despite his youth.

Unlike Claiborne, Maxwell Frost was 100% legal.  He was born on January 17, 1997, which means he celebrated his 25th birthday almost a full year before he will be sworn into Congress.

*     *     *     *     *

After congratulating Congressman-elect Frost at his press conference, the President noted that he had been the second-youngest person ever elected to the Senate.

As we learned above, Maxwell Frost wasn’t actually the youngest person ever elected to Congress.  And Joe Biden wasn’t actually the second-youngest person ever elected to the Senate– he was actually the sixth-youngest Senator.  

Biden was 29 when he was elected in 1972, but was 30 years, six weeks, and one day old when he was sworn in as a Senator.

Given that the Constitution provides that you must be at least 30 years old to serve in the U.S. Senate, Biden cut it fairly close.  But not as close as William Wells.

William Wells

Wells – like Biden, he was from Delaware – was only 30 years and ten days old when he was sworn in as a Senator.  (Not that it really matters, but William Wells was the great-great-grandfather of Orson Welles.)

While Senators are supposed to be at least 30 when they take office, four men were seated in the Senate despite being younger than that – including the legendary Henry Clay, who became a Senator from Kentucky when he was only 29.  

Second-youngest, sixth-youngest, whatever.  (Uncle Joe is known for not sweating the details.)

*     *     *     *     *

Back to Congressman-elect Maxwell Frost . . .

In 2010, I wrote about Wild in the Streets – a movie that was released the day before my 16th birthday. 

That movie starred Christopher Jones – an actor who is now largely forgotten – as a rock star who was asked for help by a Senator who wanted the voting age lowered to 18.  (That actually happened only three years after the movie was released.)

The rock star did the Senator one better – he released a song titled “Fourteen or Fight,” which inspired massive protests and demonstrations by teenagers.  As a result of the chaos that was unleashed by “Fourteen or Fight,” the oldsters in Washington cried uncle and lowered the voting age to 15.  Eventually, the kids took over the government, which put everyone who was over 35 in “re-education” camps, where they were given daily doses of LSD and lived happily (and obliviously) ever after.

The name of the fictional rock star portrayed by Christopher Jones (who was elected President by all those newly-enfranchised teenage voters) was . . . Maxwell Frost.  (Actually, it was Max Frost – but if the President can say he was the second-youngest Senator when he was actually the sixth-youngest Senator, I reckon I can say that the Christopher Jones character was named Maxwell Frost when he was actually Max Frost.)

Click here to read my 2010 post about Wild in the Streets.

Click here to listen to “Fourteen or Fight.”

Click here to listen to “Shape of Things to Come,” which was the best Max Frost song from Wild in the Streets.

New Colony Six – "Things I'd Like to Say" (1968)

Baby, is he looking after you?

Is he showing you the same love, the warm love

Just like we knew?

In May 2015, Beau Biden – the 46-year-old eldest son of Vice President Joe Biden – died after a long battle with brain cancer.  

Biden’s other son, Hunter – who was born exactly one year and a day after his brother – and his wife Kathleen separated in October of the same year but didn’t get divorced until last month.  (Their six-bedroom, 5 1/2-bath home in Washington is up for sale, with an asking price is $1.85 million.)

In March of this year, Joe Biden confirmed to the New York Post that Hunter and Beau’s widow, Hallie, have been a couple for some time.

The former Veep and his wife Jill have blessed the romance.  “We are all lucky that Hunter and Hallie found each other as they were putting their lives together again after such sadness,” Biden told the Post.  “They have mine and Jill’s full and complete support and we are happy for them.”

Joe and Hunter Biden

It's not surprising that Hunter and Hallie don't have Kathleen’s full and complete support and that she isn't happy for them.

Kathleen went ballistic when Hunter allegedly cut off most of the money he had been sending to her and their kids after the couple separated so he could spend more on wine, women, and lap dances for himself.

“Throughout the parties’ separation Mr. Biden has created financial concerns for the family by spending extravagantly on his own interests (including drugs, alcohol, prostitutes, strip clubs, and gifts for women with whom he has sexual relations), while leaving the family with no funds to pay legitimate bills,” Kathleen’s lawyers said in the divorce papers they filed on her behalf.

The once and future Mrs. Hunter Biden?
(Kathleen's on the left, Hallie's on the right)

*     *     *     *     *

If Hunter and Hallie get married, their union will be an example of levirate marriage . . . sort of.

Levirate marriage – a marriage between a widow and her dead husband’s brother – is dictated in certain circumstances by Deuteronomy 25:5, which says:

If brothers dwell together, and one of them dies, and has no child, the wife of the dead shall not be married to one not of his kin; her husband's brother shall go in to her, and take her as his wife, and perform the duty of a husband's brother to her.

If you read the following verse from Deuteronomy, the reasoning behind levirate marriage – the name comes from the Latin word levir, which mean’s “husband’s brother” – becomes apparent:

And it shall be, that the first-born that she bears [to her new husband] shall succeed in the name of his brother that is dead, that his name be not blotted out of Israel. 

In other words, the first son born to the widow and her dead husband’s brother is legally the heir of the deceased brother, and so inherits any land that belongs to the deceased brother at the time of his death, or that the deceased brother would have inherited if he had not died.  (If the deceased brother dies without an heir, land that he owns or would have inherited might end up in the hands of someone other than a close relative.)

Deuteronomy doesn’t explicitly say what the rules are if the surviving brother is already married, but I’m guessing that levirate marriage doesn’t require bigamy.

*     *     *     *     *

Levirate marriage is not the same thing as “ghost marriage,” which is relatively common among certain tribes living in South Sudan.

In a ghost marriage, a deceased groom is replaced by his brother.  Any children that are produced as a result of the stand-in groom’s efforts are considered to be children of the deceased man.

Dancers at a Nuer wedding

Female members of the Nuer tribe participate in ghost marriages because any wealth a woman brings to a Nuer marriage becomes the property of the husband.  By marrying a dead man, a Nuer wife can retain control over her wealth.

*     *     *     *     *

Levirate marriage was not practiced simply by Old Testament Jews and primitive African tribes.  Several years after Arthur, Prince of Wales – the eldest son and heir apparent to King Henry VII of England – died when he was just 16 years old, his younger brother, King Henry VIII, married his widow, Catherine of Aragon.

King Henry VIII

This was not a true levirate marriage.  It was permitted only because Catherine swore that Prince Arthur had not consummated their marriage.  That enabled Henry VIII to legally marry, but caused considerable inconvenience when the King later decided that the 32-year-old Anne Boleyn was a better bet to give him a male heir than his 47-year-old wife.

So Henry took the position that Arthur and Catherine’s marriage had been consummated after all, and sought an annulment on the grounds that it had not been lawful for him to marry his brother’s widow.  

Henry cited Leviticus 20:21, which says:

And if a man shall take his brother's wife, it is an unclean thing: he has uncovered his brother's nakedness; they shall be childless.

That is clearly inconsistent with Deuteronomy 25:5, which allows – or even requires – a brother to marry his deceased brother’s widow.  

Henry sent his men to Venice to consult with Rabbi Isaac Halfon, who opined that the Old Testament no longer sanctioned levirate marriage, and that Henry’s marriage to his brother’s widow violated Jewish law whether or not Arthur had gotten his ashes hauled.  

The Pope consulted some other rabbis, who said just the opposite, and he refused to give his blessing to Henry’s marriage to Anne.  So Henry told the Pope to take a long walk off a short pier and founded the Church of England, which said that it was fine and dandy for Henry and Anne to wed.

Click here if you’d like to read more about all this.

By the way, another British king participated in a near-levirate marriage.  Prince Albert Victor, the oldest grandson of Queen Victoria, became engaged to Princess Mary of Teck, his second cousin once removed.  But Albert Victor died of influenza only six weeks later.

King George V and his wife, Queen Mary

A year and a half later, Albert Victor’s younger brother George married Mary in London.  George was crowned King George V in 1910, and he and Queen Mary reigned until his death in 1936.  (Yes, the famous ocean liner was named after her.)

*     *      *     *     *

The last few times I heard “Things I’d Like to Say” on the radio, I made a mental note to feature it on 2 or 3 lines.  But I'd always forget.

I’m trying to think of a more beautiful 1960s love song, and I can’t.  I wouldn’t change a thing about it – not the added strings, not the march-like drum part, and especially not the solo piano coda.    

I’m just glad I didn’t own this record when it was released in 1968, when I was 16 years old and prone to bouts of unrequited love and teenage angst.  If I had owned “Things I’d Like to Say” back then, I probably would have play it over and over and over while lying with my head under our Magnavox console stereo.  (I hate to think how many times I listened to Pet Sounds – especially “Caroline, No” – while doing just that.)

The sheet music for today's featured song

The New Colony Six – who performed in Paul Revere and the Raiders-esque Revolutionary War outfits – were a Chicago band that recorded ten singles that made it into the Billboard “Hot 100.”  But only “Things I’d Like to Say” made it into the top twenty.

The song was written by band members Ronnie Rice and Les Kummel (who died in an automobile accident in 1978, when he was 33).  

Here’s “Things I’d Like to Say”:

Kinks -- "No More Looking Back" (1975)

But lately I've been going to

All the places that we once knew

One of the highlights of my 40th high-school reunion in 2010 was a tour of my old high school with several dozen of my classmates.

Joplin High School (1958)

The building dated to 1958, but had been maintained so carefully that it looked as good as new.

Less than a year later, Joplin High School was just a pile of rubble thanks to the May 22, 2011, EF-5 tornado that killed 161 people and destroyed everything in its path.

Joplin High School, after the 2011 tornado

Two weeks ago, Vice President Biden and Secretary of Education Duncan came to Joplin to dedicate the new state-of-the-art high school, which cost an estimated $121.5 million.

Vice President Biden, at the dedication
of the new Joplin High School

Biden is famous for sticking his foot in his mouth -- the Washington Post has coined the word "gaffiness" to describe his proclivity for making verbal blunders.  He uttered one of his most remarkable misstatements in Joplin, when he referred to the "161,000 brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, [and] grandparents lost" in the 2011 tornado.

He meant to say there were 161 deaths in Joplin, of course.  But there's clearly some kind of short-circuit in the wiring that connects Uncle Joe's brain to his mouth.

I went to Joplin to see my parents shortly before Biden's visit.  The first chance I had, I walked from their house to new high school, which had opened for business at the beginning of the school year despite the fact that a lot of work remained to be done on the building and the grounds.

The new high school

I'm not sure what I was expecting to see, but what I saw was something very different than that.

The new gym and football practice field

The old high school, its parking lots and athletic fields, and the adjacent Franklin Technical Center covered 16 square blocks.  The new campus is even larger, and the building has been repositioned because the old building sat on a flood plain.  So things look very different than it did when I was a student.

Here's an aerial view of Joplin High School (which was known as Parkwood High School from 1968 until 1985) when it was brand new:

Here's what it looked like after the storm:

And here's an aerial view of the new campus:

(The top photo was taken looking to the south.  The middle photo and the bottom photo were taken looking to the north.)

Schoolboys in Disgrace, the 14th studio album by the Kinks, was released in 1975.  I bought it at the Harvard Square "Coop" (the nickname of the Harvard Cooperative Society) shortly after its release.

The album tells the story of a schoolboy named Jack.  that story is summarized in the liner's album notes as follows:

Once upon a time there was a naughty little schoolboy.  He and his gang were always playing tricks on the teachers and bullying other children in the school.  One day he got himself into very serious trouble with a naughty schoolgirl and he was sent to the Headmaster who decided to disgrace the naughty boy and his gang in front of the whole school.

After this punishment the boy turned into a hard and bitter character.  Perhaps it was not the punishment that changed him but the fact that he realized people in authority would always be there to kick him down and the Establishment would always put him in his place.  He knew that he could not change the past but he vowed that in the future he would always get what he wanted. 

The back cover of 
Schoolboys in Disgrace

"No More Looking Back" is about the hold that someone from your past can continue to exert on you, and how hard it is to put that person behind you: 

And just when I think you're out of my head
I hear a song that you sang or see a book that you read
Then you're in every bar, you're in every café
You're driving every car, I see you everyday

But you're not really there 

'Cause you belong to yesterday

Ray Davies, who wrote this song and most of the Kinks' many great songs, was a keen observer of humans and all their foibles.  He could write sardonic lyrics with the best of 'em.

Ray Davies with ex-girlfriend Chrissie Hynde

But while Davies could be sharp and acerbic, he was at heart a deeply sentimental man.  Just like 2 or 3 lines.

"No More Looking Back" ends with these lines:

No more looking back
No more living in the past
Yesterday's gone, and that's a fact
Now there's no more looking back

Yesterday is gone -- long gone.  That is a fact.  But I'll never stop looking back . . . I'll never stop living in the past.

When I do look back, I'm usually looking back to my high school years and the people I knew then.

College and law school came and went but didn't leave much of a mark, it seems -- neither did most of my career experiences.

I don't have the old Joplin High School building to serve as a trigger for my high school memories.  But I don't think I need it.  I still have a lot of the people from those days -- they may look different to you than they looked 40-odd years ago, but they don't look any different to me.

In Seize the Day, Saul Bellow wrote that "[t]he past is no good to us."  That may be true, but that doesn't mean we can ignore it.

We may try to follow Bellow's advice to focus on the present, and to "[s]eize the day."  But one's past is a powerful and seductive force.  It's a lot easier to reshape the past to our liking -- the present often refuses to conform to our wishes.

All things considered, I think I like the past better.

Here's "No More Looking Back," which I think is an absolute masterpiece:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: