In today's excerpt--Saturday Night Live
alumnus and soon-to-be-United States Senator
Al Franken, related by his former comedy
team partner Tom Davis:



"Al and I met in 1967. He was in the class
above me at the exclusive, all-male, prep
Blake School in a suburb of Minneapolis. He
was one of those faces I passed in the
hallways each day, but what a
face--buckteeth, Coke-bottle glasses, and
that mouth. On demand,
he would demonstrate by slowly and
dramatically opening his maw
to its fullest extent, then inserting his
pudgy fist completely inside. ...



"He was one of those Jewish
guys who dominated scholastics--perfect SATs
and such.
They kept the grade point average up (Jews
and Catholics were
not admitted at Blake until after
World War II)....



"When Al was a precocious four-year-old,
there was a city worker
digging a ditch in front of the house who
became annoyed as young
Franken counted aloud the successive number
of each shovelful.



"[His mother] Phoebe was a real estate agent.
As an eleven-year-old home alone,
Al answered the telephone. Apparently she was
selling a house to the
actor Clayton Moore, who was famous in the
midfifties for his leading role in the
popular television show The Lone
Ranger. Now he was retiring to
Minneapolis:



Al: 'Hello?'


Mr. Moore: 'Hello ... is Mrs.
Franken there?'


Al: 'No. Who is this?'


Mr. Moore: 'How old are you,
young man?'


Al: 'Eleven.'


Mr. Moore: 'You know what? This
is the Lone Ranger calling ...'


Al: 'Yeah. And I'm Tonto.'



"At thirteen, he earned money
as a caddy at a country club golf
course. One golfer was playing
poorly and became cranky with his
caddy.



Golfer: 'You must be the worst
caddy in the world.'


Al: 'That would be too big a
coincidence.'



"As a fourteen-year-old, he was going out on
his first date, and his
father Joe, realized he had never explained
the birds and the bees to his son. Beginning
with a gentle inquiry, Joe discovered that Al
didn't appear to have a grasp of the facts.
After carefully explaining the
differences between the sexes, Al was
confused and upset. 'You mean
women don't have penises?' Joe tried a
different approach, but his
son became even more upset. Joe had to start
all over again before Al
finally told him he was joking. Poor
Joe."



Tom Davis, Thirty-Nine Years of Short-Term
Memory Loss, Grove, Copyright 2009 by Tom
Davis, pp. 25-26.


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