Happy Birthday, Uncle Sam

I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…

Had he taken better care of himself, my Uncle Sam would have been one hundred eighty-five years old come Monday.

But, he had a few bad habits.

He smoked cigars constantly from about the last time his mother pulled the nipple out of his mouth. He claimed he smoked only in moderation because he smoked only one cigar at a time.

His first love affair was with a bottle of Scotch. He remained faithful all his life.

He drank so much coffee he listed on his taxes as a dependent, Colombia.

He wasn’t very good with money.

But, he had a few good habits, too.

From a distance — a fair distance — he taught me to write. I wanted to be a newspaper man like him, and for a while I was. He wrote a short story that was translated into French. I wrote a short story that I gave a Frenchman to read; I’m not sure he ever read it. I wanted to be funny like Uncle Sam, but I sort of plateaued out a few hundred levels below.

He brought me along on some of his and my greatest adventures. I floated the Mississippi River with him. I met a prince, and about the same time, I met a pauper. You probably won’t believe it, but I once traveled in time with him.

He was a friend to presidents. I have mostly hated presidents.

We both spent a while in California. For a time, I lived in his home state, Missouri, and because of him it did feel like home. Because of some of the other folks there, I felt like a creature from another planet. I fully realized I didn’t really fit when I was compelled by some little voice inside me to turn down an invitation to join the Klan.

My grandmother, my mother’s mother, was Ethel Clemens. Not that Ethel Clemens. The Ethel Clemens from Texas.

She’s the one who told me her Uncle Sam was my uncle, too.

His full name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Some people called him Mark Twain.