In August, 1977 the Mullings Director of Standards & Practices (she had a different name then - same person, different name) and I decided that if we were going to be involved in politics, then we should move to Washington, DC.

Not knowing very many people in the Capital, I showed up and went door-to-door looking for a job in the US House. I got a wonderful piece of advice - one which I've passed along many times since - when I was asked by a Republican staff what I was looking for. "Anything," I said. He said he had looked at, maybe, a thousand organizational charts in his life but he had never seen one with a box labled: Anything. He said to decide what I wanted to do and look for someone who needed that box filled.

Thenceforth I was looking for a job as a press secretary.

I found out that John Erlenborn's office organizational chart indeed had an empty box labeled "Press Secretary" so I presented myself there.

When I told the woman, Glenda, what I was there for, she pointed to a stack of resumes in front her which seemed to be a foot high; lifted a corner of the bottom of the stack, and said, in effect, "put 'er there, pal."

In reality she looked at my resume and saw that I was coming from Marietta, Ohio which is just across the Ohio River from Williamstown, West Virginia where, as it happens, Glenda was from and still have family living there.

We got into the who-did-we-know-in-common game and it turned out that a friend of mine, a lawyer named Gary Frye (who, I noticed just re-subscribed the other day, thank you Gary) was her family's lawyer and she put my resume on the top of the stack.

Glenda told me that the current press secretary was moving back to Illinois to get married and they were eager to fill the slot as quickly as possible. I would be contacted to take a writing test, which I was.

A few days later I was handed a speech which Mr. Erlenborn had given in the recent past on the subject of ERISA and told to write a press released based upon that speech.

First problem: What the hell did ERISA stand for? It wasn't explained in the speech because the speech was to a group of pension professionals who, one assumed, already knew the answer. There were references to the PBGC - the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation - about which I also had no knowledge.

The other staff members patiently told me what the initials stood for and I set about reading the speech and writing the sample release.

In those days there were no computers, there was an IBM Selectric - raise hands if you even know what that means - which had a one-time-use ribbon. Of course the ribbon ran out shortly after I started and I had to root around in the supply closet to find a replacement which I had to then install.

The whole deal took about 30 minutes and when I walked out to hand the release to Glenda and the Washington staff director, Carolyn Sladek (also a Mullings paid subscriber, thank you, Carolyn) and Glenda they asked me what was wrong. Thinking they wondered why it had taken so long I explained about the acronyms and having to read the speech and the typewriter ribbon and how the dog ate my homework and �

It turns out they thought, because I had done it so fast, I had simply given up. The previous person, they told me, had taken about two hours.

"Don't hire that guy," I said.

The final step before actually meeting Mr. Erlenborn, was an interview by the woman whom we would now call the Chief of Staff but in those days was called the Administrative Assistant, Joanne Maxwell, who actually lived in Illinois, not in Washington.

After we chatted for a few minutes she looked at me and asked whether I was really a Republican or just saying that because I wanted the job. I informed her that as an elected City Councilman not only was I a Republican, but I was an "Honorable" to boot.

That didn't get me the job, though.

During the interview the outgoing press secretary stuck his head in the office and said that the Congressman was presenting an American flag which had flown over the Capitol at the Everett Dirksen Senior Citizen Center that coming weekend and did anyone have an Everett Dirksen anecdote he could put into the talking points?

I said that I did and recited the following:

At the time that Lyndon Johnson was Senate Majority Leader, Everett Dirksen was the Minority Leader. Dirksen was ever-vigilant about the perks which Johnson accumulated and was not the least bit shy of demanding the same for his office.

It came to pass that Johnson got a phone in his car. This was back in the day when car phones operated like ship-to-shore radio-telephones used to: You held on until an operator picked up and she (it was always a she in those days) dialed your number and made the connection for you.

Dirksen found out about this and hounded Johnson a dozen times a day wanting to know when HE was getting a telephone in HIS car.

Finally, Johnson yielded and told the Secretary of the Senate to put a phone in Dirksen's car because Dirksen was - even without using a car - driving him nuts.

They took Dirksen's car for a couple of days, put a phone in it and gave it back. The first morning that Dirksen had his new car phone he called Johnson while Johnson was in HIS car.

"Lyndon?" he proudly said into the device, "This is Ev. I'm calling you from my car."

"One minute, Ev," Johnson replied. "I've got a call on my other line."

I got the job.

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