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by Michael Tassone (Author)
In 1989, the author-a twenty-one year old student and aspiring writer-went to work helping an old family friend run his wholesale floral business. An octogenarian who was rapidly going blind, Monroe Sweetland needed someone to drive him on his forays into the wilderness to collect the dried plants he sold to florists. Their journeys took them into the forests of the Northwest, across the granite foothills of the Sierra, through the desolation of the Mojave and Sonoran Deserts, and south of the border, into Mexico, in their quest for tumbleweeds, truth, and the missing head of an Indian chief.
Their 17 year conversation would launch them each onto their own individual but intertwined political paths, inspiring Monroe to make another run for office (at age 88) and putting the author on the road to the White House.
Unable to see anything other than blurs outside the windows, Monroe would pass the time by spinning an endless stream of the history he had lived-from the organization of his first political caucus at age eleven to his mid-century overthrow of the Oregon Democratic party, from his nudging FDR to run for President to his sending JFK to the White House with a rocking chair. Monroe shared his successes, his failures, and his lifelong campaign to make the world safe for democracy.
