Me and the Senator Search for Captain Jack's Severed Head

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.

Author Biography

An inhabitant of the eastern Sierra Nevada, Michael Tassone works as a freelance writer and editor, political consultant and speechwriter. He is the author of Mexico in the Rearview Mirror: A Psychedelic Travelogue, based on his life south of the border; and of Me and the Senator Search for Captain Jack’s Severed Head, a biography of Oregon Senator Monroe Sweetland. He enjoys watching old movies, monitoring election returns, and taking long road trips through the middle of nowhere. He moonlights as a stunt driver.