Scranton Lives Matter! Ch. 15

Dear President Biden,

My name is Mabel Weatherhogg. I’m 95 years old and was born and raised in Scranton. Unlike you, I still live here. I’m a Marywood College graduate who worked as a public librarian for more than 40 years. I’m writing to invite you to be my date at next month’s Lackawanna County Friendly Sons of St. Patrick dinner.

You’ve attended this annual all-male gathering three times as featured speaker so I don’t have to tell you about the gang who runs the show. Big-feeling blowhards for the most part, they’re white men run amok among the masses, the majority of whom are women.

Go Kamala!

The event this year is online so it will be easier for us to appear together. I won’t have to punch any blockhead bouncer trying to keep me out and all you have to do is announce you’re escorting me as the first women to attend this shindig that has banned women for over a century. I’ll wave to the virtual crowd, throw out the first cabbage and make history for women’s rights that you’ll no doubt take credit for.

I don’t have much time to make history but neither do you. Getting old’s a pain in the ass, Joey, but you already know that.

Think of all the women who voted for you because they support Kamala to step in when you take your naps. Besides, it’s about time you did something to make up for the cruel way you treated Anita Hill after her ordeal with Clarence Thomas who you helped get appointed to the Supreme Court.

You see where that got us.

I have to be honest. I don’t care much for the way you’ve behaved over the years. With all that coal-miners-in-my-family malarkey and your other fibs you climbed over Scranton natives to get what you wanted. But you’re in office now so we expect a return on our investment.

Making amends includes awakening those misguided colleens in the Irish Women’s Society who think they’ve shown up the boys by starting their own group and holding their own yearly St. Patrick’s Day dinner. They let men attend, although the only ones who do are male political candidates who want to use the women by campaigning at both dinners. Opportunists just like you, they want to have their ham and eat it too. I can’t tell you how many otherwise smart women lawyers, judges, professors, doctors and elected officials won’t buck the patriarchy by even asking to go with their husbands or fathers to the men’s affair.

Not me. I’m demanding the right to attend. And after breaking the glass ceiling I’ll announce I wouldn’t be caught dead with that pack of Paddy’s pigs. They can go shit in their hats. Sorry, Mr. President, I got carried away.

So get out your best tuxedo, shine up those presidential cuff links and plant a couple of new hair plugs.

I’ll order a new green dress from Boscov’s at the mall in Central City.

Let’s make history, Joey.

Joey.

Joey!

It’s not nap time yet, young man.

PS: I’m out on bail for chaining myself to the new Joe Biden Way street sign pole outside your childhood home and would appreciate if you call the police chief and tell him to be kind to senior citizens. OK, so I was smoking a joint but you need to legalize pot anyway. Kamala got high. Maybe you ought to jump on the soul train, too.

I grow some real good stuff in the attic, Joe. I’ll give you a couple of joints the next time you’re in town. Or maybe just mail you a box at the White House. You can share it with that nice young premier from Canada. They legalized pot up there, you know. Health care for all, too.

Canada’s even better than Scranton.

Yours in the spirit of women’s rights,

Mabel