Thread by @ClaireBerlinski

Chapter Two, Klobuchar, "Growing Up."

BEACON HEIGHTS ELEMENTARY

Her memories begin with the neighbors' scary black lab, "Y'all."

(A scary *black lab?*)

A boy threw her Vikings cap into a tree to prove that "Amy+Jeff" wasn't true; the President's Physical Fitness Test; track-and-field; Miss Alexander: "After the infamous grape-coloring episode, she told my mom that I'd never be more than an average student."

Mrs. Mooney, her first grade teacher. "Thanks to her, I came to love reading." Her first book: Little House in the Big Woods.

It's written in a way that will evoke genuine nostalgia in any American woman of roughly her background. Women my age are the biggest book-buying constituency in the US, so the question, "Why did she write this," in this case, has an answer. To sell it.

We're also a reliable voting constituency. And this is making me like her more, not less, so the existence of this book makes sense.

She pretty much nails the experience of going to public schools in that era.

"There was no 'you are great no matter what you do' mantra at Beacon Heights School. It was more like, 'every so often you are pretty good, but most of the time, you need to work on it.'"

BLUEBIRDS AND 'FLYING UP'

She went to Camp Fire Girls. From the scrapbook:

"Then we ate our treats. We went back to Amy Klobuchar's house and we drank termite tonic. Yum!"

Summers on the shore of Lake Minnewashta. Hunting for fossils, riding horses, swimming on our backs. Campfires. A children's theater production of Little Women dedicated to the memory of Janis Joplin. Collecting toys for orphans in Thailand.

"All these years later, I often find myself thinking about those old Camp Fire and Beacon Heights School rules. They don't just belong at summer camp and in the classroom. We need to tack them up in the Senate Cloakroom!"

I would have used a period, not an exclamation point.

GLORIFY WORK (One of the Camp Fire girls' rules.) Babysitting for .75 an hour. "At the Wagensteens, Amy Scherber and I would collect used cigarette butts and later take them out to the woods for a pathetic try at smoking."

She and Amy Scherber became babysitting entrepreneurs. They wanted to use the earnings to go visit Laura's grandparents in Kansas City--alone. A month later, the collective of 12-year-old set off on the bus for Kansas City.

"I wish I could say that Mr. Hoffman and Mr. Danielson's seventh-grade trip to Washington was instrumental in my decision to run for Senate more than thirty years later, but all I remember now are the junior high boys ... "

Finally she gets her first real job, when she's 15--as a root-beer-mug washer at the carhop at the Wayzata A&W. "The shirts of our required uniform were tight and to the point. 'A&W Root Beer. Take home a jug of fun.'"

In their senior year, Amy, Amy, Amy, and Heidi (yes, all were named Amy) spent senior year saving up their tips and wages at Poppin' Fresh Pies for "the most memorable girl trip ever," to Fort Lauderdale for spring break.

"The mid-1970s was clearly a more trusting time," she writes, noting that no mother today would let her daughters do that. "Somehow, though, we all survived. Maybe our parents gave us enough independence that we ad no choice but to learn how to make our own good judgments."

How can you not like Amy Klobuchar?

1315 Oakview Lane

A color TV replaces the black-and-white one. (I remember all the events she describes--and the shows she remembers watching.) David Cassidy and the Partridge Family. Tacos with crumbled hamburger.

The old grey carpet replaced with a burnt-orange shag. Her parents remodel the house, building a deck. Backpacking, wildflowers, the occasional moose. Postcards.

BOOZE

Her father's high-flying job and fame had a down side. He was gone a lot. He missed family gatherings. But the biggest problem was that he started to drink more and more.

"A lot of journalists drank to excess in those days."

For years she was too young to understand what was happening, but by her teenage years it was obvious it was out of control. "My mom found liquor bottles hidden in the laundry room."

"Like many alcoholics' kids, the experience has given me a low tolerance for lying and a deep-seated desire to try to fix every problem that comes across my path, even when it isn't possible."

A MARRIAGE ENDS

Thanksgiving weekend, she's 15, she hears her dad ask her mom for a divorce. As with the rest of her recollections, she gets the details and dialogue of the period right.

JAUNT WITH JIM

She goes on long bike rides with her dad. The pace lags a bit here.

STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN "The truth was that, for my friends and me, national politics was little more than a blip in the top-of-the-hour news break during Casey Kasem's American Top 40."