I Was a Third-Grade Communist
- When Karl was in third grade in 1964, his dad started facing opposition as mayor because he wouldn't go along with a plan to open a cheap housing development in town.
- This might not seem like such a big deal, except everyone who had money invested in the project or stood to make a lot of cash from it got mad at him, and he ended up losing the next election over it.
- Before then, city council meetings always ended up getting out of control. Karl always came to the meetings because he liked watching his dad do his job and getting ice cream afterward, but as the battle over the development came to a head, the meetings ran late and Dairy Queen was always closed afterward.
- In school, Karl's teacher talked a lot about Communism and how people could get thrown in jail for disagreeing with the government. Karl started thinking there might be something to this—if all of the people who disagreed with his dad got arrested, meetings wouldn't run over and Dairy Queen would be open.
- Karl decided to announce the idea on his dad's birthday, which started out with his parents having a drunken brawl and throwing the cake on the floor. To help the situation, Karl shared his idea, thinking it would cheer up his dad.
- Except it didn't. His dad just started screaming at him and calling him names; he seemed super paranoid about whether Karl had shared his idea with anyone. (He told Paul, and Paul tried to talk him out of it. Just for the record.)
- His dad went outside to drink while Karl's mom tried to explain to him that Communism was bad. Seriously, it's 1964, the height of the Cold War—you couldn't just go around saying that.
- His dad came back inside and apologized, saying it was wrong to send people to jail for disagreeing. His mother told him that she knew he loved his dad, but that Karl should try not to be like him.