Dear President Obama,

My old man owned a factory in the South Bronx. At one point he employed 100’s of men. These men came from every race, color, and creed. All were tough and my father was tougher. If you lived and worked in the south bronx in the 60’s into the 70’s you had to be tough. When my father was teaching me to shoot he he gave me the basics; “if you feel the need to pull it, you had better be prepared to use it . . .” Along with all of the rest. I asked he if he carried one. His response. “Too small for crowd control . . . flare gun . . .” Long before those moments I was pretty fouled up.

School was one big disaster after the divorce. Regardless, my old man, not one to mince words or acts, picks me up from school and takes me to Friendly’s to try to sort this out a bit; back in the day they would put a smear of butter on the bun and that was a good burger. Anyway, we are all finished up and we get set to go, get in this convertible, and he gets all set. My Oldman is Elvis. In fact when people say he’s dead, I say no, it’s my Dad he just in hiding. We start home. A custom “8 track” is blasting Charles Aznavour, “Yesterday When I Was Young,” and we are heading home. Some guy decides to cut us off because my Oldman will not make a left fast enough for them; so they cut around our outside and take the left in front of my old man. Elvis is now on the hunt. My Oldman cuts the guy off. Shoves his car onto a sidewalk, instructs me to “look that way!” Pulls the guy out of his car, and then some lady comes out of the house, and my father instructs her to call the police. Long story short the police take the guy away that cut us off. After the quiet dinner and then the citizens arrest my old man gets back in the car, did not even break a sweat, and looks at me and says, “Help me, help you, because one day I’ll be dead.”

Who do you think you are kidding Mr. Obama? You think we are mad for trying to return to a time of economic sanity and rapid growth when people had work and this nation made things in something called factories. Yet, you sit their and say no to everything that would create the very conditions that would make that happen; and you have the gall to call us mad? The world is nuts. I’ve got the scars to prove it, so does my father, and his father before him. Both inside and out. But just because you are scared, hurt or wounded, does not give us license to do the wrong thing or shirk our responsibilities to our fellow citizens or our families. We are trying to free our economy from the burden of government and get it growing again, you can’t do that by telling people that they have to do it your way. When this nation is full of people trying to live as Frank Sinatra once sang so eloquently “My Way.”

I didn’t have “dreams of my commie father.” I had a father who might have done it “His Way,” but he always did the right thing even if he was scared, and he never, ever, blamed anyone for anything. He looked at his hand and played the best cards he could and made a difference in a lot of lives.

One must ask after three friggen years what have you done? One year . . . I’ll give you that, two . . . it’s a push hold your breath we might make it . . . three . . . you’ve got to be flipping kidding me . . .

Respectfully,

Joe Doakes