Rodney

I'll tell you my Ronald Reagan story.

The year is 1972, and I am a 16-year-old high school junior in California. It is the second week of summer, and because I did too well at social studies I have been whisked off for a week at Boys State, a program sponsored by the American Legion to train tomorrow's leaders or some damn thing. Anyway, 800 soon-to-be-seniors got trucked off to the Sacramento State campus to play state government for a week. Which we did. 800 16- and 17-year-old boys living in dorms on a college campus for a week, with no privacy and no girls. The horniness factor was at, well, code red.

Reagan was still governor of California, and he came to give the keynote speech to us all in the big college gym as the week drew to a close. He was a big guy, a good talker with a bad dye job -- in those days, the joke was that he was "prematurely orange."

So he tells us how great we are and that we're the hope of tomorrow and all that, standing out there in the middle of the basketball court with his security team. Then he takes a few questions from the audience; and remember, these were mostly student-body politics kids, so there were more than a few smart-asses. One guy asks him his views on contraception. And he says, "Y'know, the very best contraception is just that one little word -- "No." This to a gym full of horny high school guys. What do you think we did? Gave him a mighty roar and a standing ovation for the size of his balls.

And if you do just a little digging on the web, you'll find the place where Reagan is noted as the only future president ever to marry a woman who was already pregnant. I don't think Reagan had a mean or vicious bone in his body, but I do think "Great Bullshitter" is a more accurate term than Great Communicator.

I did get his signature on a Boys State ID card for no good reason, and it may still be around here.