46/14

It finally got here. All you had to do was wait for enough 24-hour cycles of time and we now have our 46th president, Joe Biden. That doesn't sound like that many, but then again we are quite comparatively a young country, and always will be when compared to some others.

President Biden is my 14th president. As my blog profile points out, I was born during the Truman administration. I don't remember all that, but I do remember Truman being followed by the press after he left office as he was on one of his "constitutional" brisk walks with a cane. They strained to keep up.

I haven't been watching many inaugurations, but I have been watching this one. Why? One, I'm retired and home a good deal, and it is reminding me of the one in 1961 when JFK took office. It was a much colder day then, but just as clear. We had a snow day from school in New York, and my father made sure I watched the inauguration. I really don't know if my father was a Democrat or a Republican. My guess is he never voted, despite being a WW II veteran and a government employee. You didn't have to vote.

My guess is that he believed that registering to vote would put you on the list for jury duty. Many people of that era thought that. And it was true. The jury rolls were plucked from the rolls of registered voters. Until they weren't, and DMV and other databases were relied on to create a jury pool. Even then he ducked it by not even having a driver's license. As did my mother.

I remember JFK in a top hat getting some words from President Eisenhower before JFK came out. The story went Ike warned JFK about Vietnam. Turns out the warning was needed, if not heeded.

Of course we don't have the presence of the outgoing president. Donald Trump. He chose not to attend to make a point, no doubt. But he did give his farewell address at Andrews Air Force base, coincidently where my father worked for a bit when he had to leave the shuttered Brooklyn Navy Yard and take a job in Washington in order to stay with the Department of Defense, Department of Navy.

Fourteen presidents is not that many, but it does indicate some longevity on my part. I read of someone who was alive for 18 presidents. I don't remember who, but a few deaths in office and certainly an assassination will bump the count up. I think the individual did overlap William Henry Harrison and Abraham Lincoln.

One term presidents will advance the count a bit rapidly as well. I've experienced a few of those, and one of course just exited. So far, impeachments haven't resulted in removals. Even impeachment in bunches.

Like Big Julie, the Chicago gangster in the musical 'Guys and Dolls,' who packs a weapon and plays craps with dice with "no spots," who boasts of arrests, "but no convictions." President Trump left town without the Big G. being hung on him. Teflon Don has left the building.

I did the chronology. My father's 1915-1987 earned him 13 presidents. With 14, I'm already one ahead.  Will I witness 15? Only time will tell.

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