Thread by @ClaireBerlinski

Chapter 1: Beginnings. (Klobuchar, for those of you just joining in.)

WHEN EVERYTHING WAS NEW

Born in 1960, begins with a genuinely well-written paragraph about what Minnesota looked like in 1960.

"what were once cow paths had become streets with names like Kirkwood and Evergreen and Jonquil." ...

Every single appliance in the house--from the butter-yellow colored oven to the aqua countertop stove to the side-by-side washer and dryer--

was new, paid for by my dad's GI loan."

Her parents got married when Elvis recorded his first songs. We continue in this vein.

Her mom teaches her to be well-mannered.

Thanks to Eisenhower, we had an interstate highway system, and her parents drove their "brand-new Plymouth west for their honeymoon to the Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming's Teton National Park."

Both parents came from families that struggled during the Depression. "For my parents, the memories of more difficult times were never far behind."

Her father stashed cash in the woodpile in the garage for fear of another Depression and a run on the banks.

"For my parents' generation, another disaster was always looming around the corner ... the hazards from the past were as close to my mom and dad's present as the cars stretching behind them in the glistening rearview mirror of my dad's beige four door--"

"But the sheer joy of even having that rearview mirror--of being able to afford that car--was reason enough to leave the past behind. In a country filled with the exuberance of a better decade,

and the promise of upward paths for all, my parents counted their blessings."

Yes, that was what it was like to be born in the 60s.

BREAKING NEWS:

"Nothing embodied that youthful exuberance more ... than [JFK]."

When we went to vote in 1960, no one knew the outcome: this was before data crunching and election modeling and exit polling. "The country held its breath."

Her dad, Jimmy, was assigned to work on the election results in the midwest.

Nixon and Kennedy were still dead even in the morning, but tens of thousands of votes were still unreported on the Mesabi Iron Range, her dad's home turf.

Her dad told the bureau chief he had no doubt the region would go for Kennedy. "Dick Nixon's prospects," he told his boss, "were as bright as the temperance movement's chances in West Duluth."

"And if Kennedy won Minnesota's eleven electoral votes, that would put him over the top ... "

His boss called the AP desk chief in New York. "We're going to elect Kennedy."

"Silence followed."

"I've got two words for you guys in Minneapolis," he finally said, "pausing before adding with great emphasis: 'Be right.'"

Hey, I'm liking this book. It's charming.

So her dad wrote the national story that declared Kennedy the victor (on an Underwood typewriter, via teletype).

The moment of glory was brief; after lunch he was given his next assignment: Three pigs were stuck in the mud near Faribault.

MY MOM

Her earliest memory of life is the day JFK was shot.

"I only remember my mother on the floor of our basement laundry room, crying over her pile of Life magazines."

She tells an anecdote about Roosevelt's funeral. A man collapsed in grief as the funeral procession went by. A stranger asked, "Did you know the President?"

"No, I didn't know the President, but he knew me. He knew me."

TEACHER OF THE YEAR

Her mom attended Milwaukee State Teachers College. In 1951, she went on a teachers' strike.

The governor settled. Her mom was proud of her union membership. It sounds like her mom was a great teacher. From a second-grade scrapbook: "Today a squirrel visited our class. It was cool. Mrs. Klobuchar made us wash our hands when he left."

"The Monarch butterfly unit was my mom's favorite."

Amy gets big literary points with me for pulling off this "I'm just a normal American like you" schtick in such a way that it seems authentic and charming,

--as opposed to hackneyed, sickly and manipulative.

As the other candidates demonstrate amply, it is *not* easy to do that.

Her mom's parents were Swiss immigrants, certain they could have a better life in America.

(Imagine that.)

"With US quotas for Swiss immigrants already filled ... he was detained at Ellis Island." He was released on the condition he go to Canada, which he did and promptly re-entered the country. TBC ....

Klobuchar, con't. Her grandfather lived as an "alien" and didn't apply to be a US citizen even after marrying her grandmother. When he received a letter telling him he had to register as an alien (after the Alien Registration Act),

it "created a lot of angst." The family feared he'd be deported and dropped right into the middle of WWII.

But he was able to register without a problem, and the next year he applied for citizenship. Three weeks later, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.

You see where she's going with this, I presume.

She thinks a lot about her grandfather in her efforts to pass a comprehensive, bipartisan bill with a path to citizenship.

Even that seems absolutely genuine. She concludes,

"This country was built by immigrants and the sons and daughters of immigrants. We all stand on their shoulders."

THE SLOVENIANS

"The immigrant experience was central to my dad's life, too." Like many from central and southern Europe, "they made their way to Minnesota to work in the underground mines."

Klobuchar means "hatmaker" in Slovene.

"Back in the old country, Slovenians worked as miners and farmers and woodworkers. But for my ancestors, American brough the promise not only of steady work but better lives for their children."

The Hapsburg dynasty would no longer be able to tell them which of their kids could go to school. "In America, they would be paying taxes to *their* country, not to foreign monarchs, and every child would get a good education."

"If the New World was not a deliverance to them, it would be for their children." Keeping warm was a major struggle; they didn't complain.

There were ten kids in her grandfather's family. His mother died when he was 19; his father died two years later. He became responsible for taking care of all nine siblings.

She describes the Zenith Mine, where he worked. "Every time a siren would go off, the whole town would come running in to see who had been injured, who had been killed."

He met Mary Pucel, oldest of eight, and married her in 1927: she was already pregnant with Amy's dad.

(She writes, "Nothing like doing a little research only to find out that not one but *both* of your parents were conceived before marriage!")

Her description of her grandfather's life and times is one I'd enjoy reading even if she wasn't running.

"My grandpa also liked to drink."

Later, while campaigning, she met a man whose father worked with her grandpa and teared up remembering his courage. If I condense this it will sound twee,

but the gist is that other mine foremen would stand at the top of the mine and radio down to the miners below. "Not Mike Klobuchar. He would always go with his guys. And he would always go first."

MY DAD

Her grandmother was "a tiger mom before anyone had heard of tiger moms." Entirely devoted to the project of getting her sons "to make it in America."

Her son, she decided, would be a journalist. That was a career worth pursuing.

(Imagine that, @mclayfield. Journalism as the key to being upwardly mobile)

Six months into his job at the Bismarck Daily Tribune, her father was drafted and sent to a new psychological warfare unit in Stuttgart. He still feels guilty that he served in Germany when so many he trained with went to Korea.

He returns. "This was print journalism's heyday, when local newspapers could afford to send reporters ... all over the world." And so her father did.

"My dad also drank too much."

In 1993 he got a DWI. That's when he got sober.

You know, I think she actually wrote this. She gives samples of her father's prose; it seems plausible that he taught her how to write.

Her father had a very successful career in journalism, and his work "reflected his bedrock belief that if you worked hard and tried your best, you would get ahead in America."

She closes with a nice paragraph about her father's retirement. End of chapter.

The second sentence here is awkwardly ambiguous. Let's try again, "In the morning, Nixon and Kennedy were still in a dead heat."