The American Spectator

TAS Live

(Page 3 of 4)

p> FRIDAY br> I AM UP IN THE WORLD'S most beautiful county, Bonner County, Idaho, eating spare ribs at Hill's Resort, looking at Priest Lake, basking in the good aura, and a couple came up to me a few minutes ago. They were a good-looking middle-aged couple named Captain and Mrs. McMahon, USN. Captain McMahon flew 150 missions piloting an A-6 over Vietnam. Exactly 40 years ago today, while I was studying to be a pukey, whining trial lawyer, his A-6 caught fire and he had to eject over the South China Sea. A Soviet trawler was about to pick him up when a U.S. Navy helicopter swooped in and saved him. /p>

He is still amazingly handsome, even jaunty, and his wife is beautiful. And they glow with their inner courage and bravery and patriotism. And -- now this is the best part -- they are thanking me for the few words I write about the military. I walked down by the shore of Luby Bay and looked at the lake and the mountains and the sky and the eagles at dusk and thought, when God sends messengers of good, he sometimes sends warriors with beautiful wives to do His bidding. Without Captain McMahon and the others like him, this would all be ashes. God bless him and her, and this magnificent place, this Idaho, this America.

p> SATURDAY br> I AM BACK HOME AFTER A GLORIOUS morning at the marina in Sandpoint. Perfect sun, balmy breeze, friendly men and women greeting me by name out by the sailboats. I felt as if I were in heaven, and I was. /p>

But now I am back and wifey is still out of town with Tommy in Massachusetts. How I miss them both.

Let me now tell you about wifey, about the greatest creation of mankind.

On July 4, 1966, I went to a black tie ball at the State Department, where I was a 21-year-old summer intern. I met a stunningly beautiful auburn-haired 19-year-old woman with a perfect nose in a blue silk dress. She was from Idabel, Oklahoma. She looked like a dream come true and went to Vassar College, not far from where I was going to law school in New Haven, Connecticut.

Flash forward. It's 2005. This woman Alexandra Denman -- she goes by her maiden name because she was for a time a famous lawyer -- has been my wife off and on for 37 years. In that time, we have been divorced, remarried, separated, reunited, and are now apart for the summer and fall as she works on an errand of mercy in New England and I swim and act in Beverly Hills.

This woman, this wifey, is a saint. She has the patience of Job. She never gets angry except at Democrats -- just kidding, she really almost never gets angry at all. She forgives the most outrageous behavior, especially by her husband, and has the most spectacularly acute sense of humor on the planet.

She has a voice that makes music out of a simple call to have some breakfast. She works tirelessly for animal charities and travels all around the world rescuing poor helpless beasts.

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Taxes, Business, Global Warming, Law, Military, Iraq, NATO