Messing With Jerks
It's funny how memories from my past surface at unexpected times.
Like just a little while ago while taking a shower a humorous incident floated up from the archives of my aging brain.
It took place in 1986 or 87 when I was very active in trying to help organize the Florida Libertarian party. Back then it wasn't possible to register as a Libertarian so that was one of the goals, another was trying to field actual candidates for office.
Nothing was easy of course. Especially the task of organizing the party. Organizing Libertarians is very much like trying to herd cats. Almost an impossibility and an experience that you will never forget.
Anyway, one of my buddies in the party was a character named Charlie Manhardt. I have often wondered what happened to him, but the night in my memory we were commiserating at the state convention which was being held in a large building in Cape Canaveral, FL. Somehow we got wind that the American NAZI Party, the KKK and the Aryan Nations were having a get together in a hall adjacent to the one we were in.
Charlie and I looked at each other and smiled. We knew what we had to do.
So we sauntered over to the nearby hall which was brimming with racist dimwits and weaseled our way in. We listened to a couple of the speakers rant and rave and the we both approached the stage where we smooth-talked some grand dragon or some such crap into letting us have the microphone.
Once on stage, with microphone in hand, Charlie started in on a speech about the LP and how we were the party of freedom, small government, very low taxes etc. the crowd was warming up. It was time so then I chimed in. We both launched into a vitriolic tirade berating the assembled host as a bunch of loser, dim witted, racist SOBs as I recollect we thoroughly impugned their ancestry, their upbringing and were preparing to delve into their apparent lack of any functional brain cells when a bunch of them bum rushed us off the stage and out of the hall. We were admonished to stay gone and told that Libertarians would never again be welcome at one of their meetings.
Charlie and I were laughing pretty darn hard by the time those NAZI's tossed us out. I still laugh when I think of the stunned looks on their faces when we got into our denunciation of their small-minded philosophy.
Priceless.
Almost as funny as the time I walked up to a gaggle of greasy bikers clustered around their chopped Harleys in front of a Cocoa Beach bar and told them their Harleys were only good for boat anchors. But that's another story.