Straight Man at Last

Fourteen years ago Seattle's Victor Aloysius Meyers suspected that he was about to be elected mayor. He felt a passionate urge to emit a few genteel and stately phrases. At the time, he was costumed in a sheet and was leading a goat; he thought he'd better change back into store clothes before he made his statement.

Victor Meyers' sudden resolution horrified a Seattle Times reporter named Doug Welch. Reason: the Times was running Vic for mayor to express its jaundiced opinion of the serious candidates, and it was Welch's chore to keep him funny. Welch gave Vic a card to hand to toastmasters. The card read:

"This is my day of silence."

Vic was a bandleader at this point in his career and had entered into the gag campaign amicably enough. But the heady fumes of politics seeped up his nose and changed him for good. After his defeat, he looked back on the mayoralty campaign morosely, convinced that he might have won if Welch had let him talk. So he filed for Lieutenant Governor of the state; a Democrat, he was not a bit surprised when he was elected in the Roosevelt landslide in 1932.

Vic Meyers set out to become a statesman. When a reporter told him he would have to learn parliamentary law if he was to preside over the state senate, Vic said: "To hell with that. Good old American law is what we're going to have."

Nobody took him seriously--the ghost of Welch's rented goat trailed through the years. But the memory did him no harm. Washington, a state which likes some fun with its politics, re-elected him with showy majorities.

When Vic came back to the scene of his early embarrassment, and filed for mayor of Seattle last winter, the city was delighted. Some politicos even guessed that he had a chance. The incumbent, Mayor William F. Devin, a good, dull, reform mayor, had followed close on the heels of an earlier good, dull reform mayor with no joker in between. Perhaps the voters would make a change, just for laughs. But by last week Seattle had learned the shattering truth--Vic was a serious man, too. He was through with gags.

By a supreme effort he managed to be duller and more dignified than the mayor. Seattle voters, confronted almost for the first time with two polite candidates, hardly knew where to turn. As for Vic Meyers, he hadn't looked as happy in years.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.