Rural Thoughts

Kristi and I actually had an experience with two guys who claimed to be with the secret service way back when that leave us not surprised at all about what is going on with the agency now.

During Bill Clinton's original campaign for president when he ran against incumbent George Herbert Walker Bush (Bush I), he stopped in Paducah during his day-before-the-election fly around the country campaign extravaganza. He flew into Barkley airport in the early evening for a campaign stop. He knew, wisely, that a fly-in to Paducah would get him press not just in Kentucky, but in Illinois, Missouri, Tennessee, and Indiana.

Kristi and I went. You had to park your car at the Park Avenue Kroger's parking lot and catch a shuttle bus out to the airport. It was the only way you could get in. It was quite an event - Bill, Hillary, Chelsea, Al, Tipper, and the late Ron Brown and his wife appeared together on stage.

After the event, we went to our favorite pizza joint in Paducah, Pizza by the Pound, an out of the way neighborhood place, run by a local couple, that is truly a local, Paducah establishment, and has the best pizza in town by far.

There weren't too many people there at that time - it was getting later. But there were two guys that weren't familiar, dressed in suits, sitting at the bar. They talked loudly about being secret service agents. They made disparaging comments about Clinton, and, as they got up to leave, told everyone in the bar to vote for Mr. Bush.

When they went out the door, the owner, us and a few others looked curiously at a piece of paper that they had left at the bar. The owner picked it up and looked, and then showed it to us. It was the plans for protecting Clinton in Paducah. Why they left it there when it had become sort of out of date because the event was over and Clinton had flown out by then, is hard to understand. But obviously to us, when you combined the fact that they spoke so openly in the joint, against Clinton, whom they were supposed to be protecting, and then left that paper which they shouldn't have done, really made us uncomfortable.

But these dudes were scary, and we never said a word, and probably no one else ever did. But it did happen, and I wouldn't be surprised if the owner still has the paper, because he is a collector.

After that, I have never had that much faith in the secret service. Nevertheless, nothing serious has happened to a president in the recent past. Let's hope it stays that way. The last thing our country needs is something like that happening.