The Republic and The Empire
(24 Hours With The Father of My Country)

By Juan Valdez  

I had to take George Washington down to the airport to pick up my parents last Friday morning. George had yet to see a freeway, a car or much of anything since he arrived in our home Thursday morning. He had seen the refrigerator, the overhead lights and the pool, but I was trying to shield him from anything technologically radical until we could talk to him and explain all that’s happened in 200 years. We instructed the kids to keep the TVs off around him and insisted that they use headphones when listening to music. My wife kept her door shut while working on the computer. We weren’t sure how he arrived in our home. It might have been a temporal rift in the space-time continuum or maybe he was just a ghost. Either way, our guest wasn’t yet familiar with 21st Century America and we thought he should take it slow.

I gave him a stack of Smithsonian magazines and some grapes, crackers and water while I went to work on Thursday, asking him not to leave the house. I remembered that episode of Bewitched when George Washington visited Samantha. Gladys Kravitz went nuts when she saw GW hanging out at the Stevens’ home. I have some nosy neighbors, and I didn’t want a repeat of that episode.

At dinner on Thursday, we asked the kids to limit their questions of Mr. Washington to those that pertained to his era and his accomplishments as a founding father. He kept us rapt as he recounted tales of Valley Forge and the Continental Congress. He laughed aloud when our daughter asked if he had really chopped down a cherry tree and thrown a dollar coin across the Potomac. He seemed to love the London broil we cooked on the grill and had more than his share of wine. He seemed surprised that we used our own children to take care of cleanup and dishes.

We took him to the front room, where we keep books and a nice living room set. This is the room of our house no one ever goes in because it has no TV. It’s also the room I told George to occupy while I was at work. We poured more wine and began to take him through the decades, giving him highlights of American history since his death. The last he knew, John Adams was in office and the country had only recently been divided by political parties, beginning to show signs of geographical partisanship.

It was tough to explain the Civil War, the Federal Reserve and foreign policy, not to mention electricity, aviation, naval supremacy and smart bombs. We took him through the Industrial Revolution, the Cold War, Tupperware and hip-hop. He was getting bewildered. As the evening wore on and he had had too much to drink, we showed him to his bed. He’d occupy our youngest son’s bedroom. We wanted to be good hosts, so we put a large bowl under his bed, as is his tradition, just in case he might need to get rid of some of that wine overnight.

I woke George the next morning at 5:00 AM, my parents’ flight due in at 6:30. I gave him some baggy jeans, a large t-shirt, a fleece pullover and some flip-flops, hoping he’d blend in a little better. His breath was awful and I didn’t want to ask about the wooden teeth, so I showed him how we swish around mouthwash and spit it out. He jumped at the tingly sensation, but laughed at what a “marvelous concoction” this was.

I needed coffee and George wanted some too. He explained that it was a drink he’d become familiar with early in life, and now almost depended on it, “as if it were a trusted friend,” he said.

I showed him the car in the garage and asked him if he was ready. He seemed to be and we took our seats. I told him to think of it merely as a horseless carriage, only with a much smoother and faster ride. I felt the need to warn him of everything, like the sound of the garage door opening, the ding-ding of the seatbelt warning, the vents blowing air and anything else that might catch him off guard.

Once he was relatively accustomed to the speed and the turns, I asked him to sit back and take his hands off the dashboard and try to relax. His eyes were wide as I explained that we were on our way to “an airport,” where “large airships” carrying many people from distant places would “dock.” I explained that we could “fly” from Florida to New York or yes, even Washington, in a morning.

He asked where my parents lived and I had to find a way to describe Alaska. I had to take him through Manifest Destiny, the fifty states, the gold rush, Russia and the oil trade. He thought it would be awfully cold up there. I explained that it was indeed, but they had nice heat and good clothing.

I asked him how long it would take to travel the 45 miles to the airport if we were using a horse and buggy. He said that you might make it in a day, maybe five hours, if your horse was very, very strong, but you’d be best to find a stopping-off place and make it a two-day journey in order to rest and feed your horse overnight. I told him that “that must’ve sucked,” and he offered that the reason he proposed moving the nation’s capital to Northern Virginia was so that he wouldn’t have to make what he called the “arduous and unpleasant journey from Mt. Vernon to Philadelphia.” I told him “smart move” and then allowed that I found Northern Virginia to be “a delightful area with a happy, prosperous populous.” I was lying, of course, but I didn’t want him to know what had happened to DC just yet. I was putting a good face on America for him, eager to please my guest who started it all.

He wanted to know about farming, international trade and banking. I was getting in over my head and the best I could offer was that “The United States of America enjoys a healthy trading partnership with most nations of the earth, although we import much more than we export these days.” He was not very happy with that news. I explained that our dollar was fairly strong against other world currencies, but that Europe had put quite a dent in it recently. He muttered something about those “irascible Frenchmen,” and I said “yes, they are very irascible,” not really sure what irascible meant. I told him that our farmers were still the best in the world and provided food for millions of people all across the globe. He smiled and wanted to know what crops were our best exports. I told him “wheat, corn and tobacco,” not really sure again.

“The brown gold,” George smiled. He asked where he might find a tobacconist. I pulled out my pack of Marlboro Menthols and lit one up as I offered him a cigarette. He gagged on the first few hits, but eventually found the right depth at which to inhale. He was getting more relaxed and looked kind of cool there with his grey hair pulled back, dressed like a beach bum and smoking away.

He read every billboard aloud and wanted to know what each of them was advertising. I had a hard time explaining the one for the Women’s Reproductive Health Center, not ready to explain abortion to a man whose contemporaries were fathering children by their slaves. He was glad to see that Orlando had an opera and “teams of sport,” and said that we had made a good choice in taking this land from the French and Spanish. He was enthralled by the lights of downtown and I told him that all the names at the tops of the largest buildings were the names of private banks. He said something about Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton that was lost on me.

As we pulled through the toll booth, I showed him the one dollar bill I was about to hand the gatekeeper. He looked at his picture and smiled. I showed him the quarter she handed me as change for the 75¢ toll and he smiled again. I wasn’t going to show him that Hamilton got his picture on the ten or that Eisenhower appears on the dollar coin. Ignorance was bliss for now.

George wanted another cigarette as talk turned to politics. I told him about the “George, son of George,” who was seeking reelection, likely against “John Kerry of Massachusetts, a Senator.” I had to explain the War in Iraq, 9/11, healthcare and jobs. I had to explain war service as a political issue, the National Guard and Vietnam.

George wanted to know what all the Universal Studios billboards were about and I had to go into theme parks, Disney, pop-culture, entertainment and tourism. I was tired as hell and it wasn’t even 6:00 AM yet. George was wearing me out.

George was reading everything aloud, even the phone numbers on billboards, and I was getting a little annoyed with him. It was like having a first-grader who had just learned to read sitting next to me, having to correct him when he’d read things wrong, like saying “Colonial Doctor” if the exit ramp said “Colonial Dr.”

I told him in gentle terms that advertising ruled our country now and that everyone who was in business was in competition for the eyes and ears of the consumer - and I was only talking about billboards. It would be awhile before I could explain to George about radio and TV ads, not to mention junk mail, internet pop-ups and SPAM.

We got to the airport, where the “airships” were making “a great commotion” overhead. George kept looking up. I was certain that people we passed thought I was taking a senile or otherwise mentally-challenged old man on a field trip. Security was a nightmare, as it always is nowadays in airports and I had to talk to George about Homeland Security, shoe bombs, box cutters, Saudi Arabia and metal detectors. He said that a man could simply fashion a knife from a piece of wood and no one would be “any the wiser.” I told him to be quiet or we’d be in big trouble real soon.

I was checking the arrival board, looking for Alaska Airlines Flight 90 from Seattle when I heard an angry woman yelling something about “get this sick old man off of me!” I turned to see a woman in very tight low-cut jeans, her belly revealed in a sleeveless, very tight sweater. It appeared that she had augmented her breasts, or perhaps she was just freakishly endowed. And it appeared that the father of my country had removed his pullover and was attempting to cover the woman's exposed parts.

I apologized to the woman and pulled George over to the food court. We rode the moving sidewalk as I knew George would get a kick out of it, like I still do. We ordered coffee at McDonald’s, where I explained fast-food, the sexual revolution, plastic surgery and the dangers of offending people, lest you get slapped with a lawsuit. That led to talk of insurance companies, tort reform, lawyers and our judicial system, which led in turn to more talk about the prisons, the hospitals and the relative health and safety of our citizenry.

George was ready for another cigarette and asked if he “might please obtain another of those delightful tobacco rolls.” I had to explain the anti-smoking crowd, second-hand smoke, lung cancer and laws prohibiting smoking indoors.

We had a few minutes to kill so we went outside, the sun still not up yet but the morning breeze perfect for outdoor smoking.

I felt bad for George. I sensed he was concerned with what had happened in his Republic since 1799. “We’re afraid to offend anyone in this country, George,” I said, “We’re polite to a fault, or the law will make us polite. You can easily argue that we’ve come a long way since your day, but at the same time, I think we’d do well to take 2 days to travel 45 miles.”

“You can’t stop progress, son,” George said as he inhaled deeper on his Marlboro Menthol.

“Yeah, I guess,” I said as I stubbed out my butt in the metal tray by the bench we sat on.

I asked him what concerned him most about what he’d seen in the last 24 hours. He didn’t answer the question directly. He said he was glad to see that my family ate dinner together. He was glad that my children were receiving a good education. He was pleased that even I, a mere commoner with no advanced education, with coarse language and no servants or lineage that might gain me favor, seemed still to be a knowledgeable citizen, able to read and write and provide some semblance of security to my family.

He asked me if I planned to vote in the upcoming election. I said yes. He said that was a good thing and offered a bit of advice.

He said that he and his fellow founders sought to build a republic, but lamented that what he saw here was more of an empire. He encouraged me to vote for the republic. He said that back then, they were building something new. Now, sadly, it was something old. He said it looked like Rome in many ways. I asked him if he’d ever been to Rome. He just smiled.

I told him the world was a much smaller place these days and what he deemed an empire was just the rest of the world looking to us for hope, help, money or entertainment. He said something to the effect of “people are people and if you treat them with respect, you’ll get respect in return.”

George said he wanted to see more of the country and asked if he might borrow some money. I told him that my ATM wouldn’t allow that large of a withdrawal, which led to a brief discussion of credit, the Treasury, debt and bankruptcy. I showed him a credit card and asked him to keep it in a safe place and also gave him my Social Security card as a form of secondary ID. I showed him how to sign my name like me and how to present the card for payment of services. I told him to say he didn't drive when they asked for a driver's license. He seemed pleased that such a small plastic card had such power. I asked him to please be careful and not to be gone much more than a month. I told him to fly coach and not to eat in fancy restaurants. I told him to use my name and not dare allow that he was who he really was.

I told him about Rushmore, Hawaii, San Diego and Seattle. I told him he should check out Yosemite, Niagara, Texas or Colorado. He said he was first going home, to Northern Virginia. That bothered me, but I wasn’t going to ask why.

I told him he’d need better clothes up in Virginia and told him to find a Gap or a Target. I told him to use Southwest Airlines if possible and to stay away from fried foods. I felt like dads must feel when they send their kids off to college or away to camp for the first time. I told him to make his way back to Orlando in no less than one month, before my credit ran out.

My parents arrived just after I said goodbye to George. I haven’t explained to them about our visitor yet. I’m not telling them why I keep looking up my credit card activity online. The kids have been instructed to keep it quiet with friends and teachers.

It looks like George flew Southwest to DC, got a room at the Marriott in Crystal City and purchased some trinkets in the Smithsonian gift shop. He bought a wool jacket, socks and shoes at the Target in Arlington. He bought a Metro pass and appears to have found a grocery store, where he purchased some vegetables, beef jerky, mouthwash, fruits and beer, so I’m guessing his room at the Marriott has a mini-fridge. I can only assume he’s rewashing my jeans and t-shirt, using the hotel’s laundry service. I keep hoping to see another plane ticket appear on the activity, but it seems like he plans to stay in DC awhile. I hope he keeps his mouth shut and stays out of trouble.

Email Juan Valdez

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