Paper's in the Snow

  I'm going to ramble here because I'm a bit disoriented after the recent election. I'm trying not to get overwrought. Once, when my father was on his way to vote, I asked him if his candidate ever lost. "Sometimes," he said, which surprised me because I thought he was always right. Wisdom says you can't win 'em all. When you're down you make the best of it and look to the next race. You don't want to behave like Mrs. Parkman.
  Mrs. Parkman was a rich old lady my grandmother worked for in Brookline. Brookline is a town almost surrounded by Boston, It resisted absorption by Boston because it wanted to maintain an enclave where rich people could avoid the rough and tumble of the big city. Ennaways, my grandmother Alice, who came to Boston from Ireland in her twenties, worked as a housekeeper for Mrs. Parkman. Mrs. Parkman had married a descendant of Francis Parkman, the famous historian of the early United States. When Mrs. Parkman eventually died, we went to the estate sale. We got some nice china, a pair of long wooden skis, and other things. I liked to imagine Francis Parkman exploring the Oregon Trail on these skis, but that was a delusion probably.
  But back to the election. At the grocery store yesterday a pre-election tabloid screamed "Hillary Crazy!" The photo was not flattering. My one consolation, and it's an unworthy one I admit, was that soon Trump will be looking nuts by the checkout counter. And the white trash will lick it up and call for more. [Stop it Joe!]
 To tie all this in with Mrs. Parkman (and by the way, my grandmother was in her seventies at this time), my grandmother's first task at seven a.m. was to make Mrs. Parkman's breakfast and carry it upstairs to her bedroom with her copy of the Boston Herald. After finishing her chores on this particular day, Alice headed for home. But there in the bushes by the front door lay Mrs. Parkman's Herald, pitched out the bedroom window. Also, it had snowed the night before. The headline read "JFK DEFEATS NIXON!" Alice let the paper lay since it was the Republican paper.
After all these years, I know myself now how poor Mrs. Parkman felt.