Happy Birthday, Uncle Sam

Photo by Joe Sohm

I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…

Had he taken better care of himself, my Uncle Sam would have been one hundred eighty-five years old come Monday.

But, he had a few bad habits.

He smoked cigars constantly from about the last time his mother pulled the nipple out of his mouth. He claimed he smoked only in moderation because he smoked only one cigar at a time.

His first love affair was with a bottle of Scotch. He remained faithful all his life.

He drank so much coffee he listed on his taxes as a dependent, Colombia.

He wasn’t very good with money.

But, he had a few good habits, too.

From a distance — a fair distance — he taught me to write. I wanted to be a newspaper man like him, and for a while I was. He wrote a short story that was translated into French. I wrote a short story that I gave a Frenchman to read; I’m not sure he ever read it. I wanted to be funny like Uncle Sam, but I sort of plateaued out a few hundred levels below.

H…