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    Running for President, Stories
    Running for President, Stories
    Running for President, Stories
    Ebook99 pages1 hour

    Running for President, Stories

    By Jack Quinn

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    This book is a collection of three short stories from the life of the fictional character Jason Wilder, a psychopath who in this alternative view of history manages to defeat Barack Obama in his bid for a second term as president of the United States. The first story, "Jason Wilder in Tempe, Arizona," follows Jason through his first year as a university student and ends with his application for a summer job with the infamous used car salesman Texas Bob. The second story, "Politically Outspoken," portrays a successful Jason Wilder who is dissatisfied with his upper-middle-class life and decides to run for governor of Arizona. The third story, "Running for President." gives this collection of stories its title and begins when the fabulously rich Hogson Brothers approach Jason to run as their candidate for president of the United States. It is a cynical view of corrupt presidential politics that some find all to believable and could have been written as a satire on the 2016 presidential campaign.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJack Quinn
    Release dateMay 2, 2016
    ISBN9781311503527
    Running for President, Stories
    Author

    Jack Quinn

    Jack held a variety of unusual jobs after graduating from high school in Johnstown, Pennsylvania including a job as a translator in a vacation resort in Spain, a stint in the Swedish Merchant Marine, and another as a civilian electrician working for the British Army on the Rhine in Hannover, Germany. When he returned to the U.S., he worked his way through Arizona State University as a disk jockey and then spent a year in graduate school studying German literature at the University of Washington in Seattle. Jack returned to Phoenix where he supervised a quality control department at Motorola Semiconductors before teaching communications and digital electronics for eight years at the Phoenix campus of DeVry University. From DeVry he went to work for In-Stat in Scottsdale, Arizona in 1990, where he began the company's original microprocessor service. Jack left In-Stat in 1992 to found Micrologic Research. After retirement in 2011, he completed four years of undergraduate studies in the French language, which included one year at Stendhal University in Grenoble, France.

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      Book preview

      Running for President, Stories - Jack Quinn

      Running for President

      A Psychopath Runs for President of the United States

      Short Stories Based on his Biography

      Based on a novel by
      Jack Quinn

      Published by Micrologic Research

      4631 East Hubbell Street

      Phoenix, Arizona 85008-3213 USA

      I dedicate these stories to my daughter

      Inge Quinn and to my sister Jean Quinn

      Copyright © 2016 by Jack Quinn. All rights reserved.

      For information contact:

      Micrologic Research

      4631 E Hubbell St

      Phoenix, AZ 85008-3213

      USA

      Table of Contents

      Forward

      Jason Wilder in Tempe, Arizona

      Politically Outspoken

      Running for President

      Other Works by Jack Quinn

      Forward

      These short stories from the life of the fictitious presidential candidate Jason Wilder are based on the book Running for President, which is available in eBook and printed format. If you enjoy these stories, I hope you will consider reading book upon which they are based. You can search for it by title on Amazon.

      Jason Wilder in Tempe, Arizona

      It was damned hot when Jason stepped out of Terminal Two in Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix on August 1, 1993. He thought he would suffocate. A nearby electronic sign flashed the temperature, 114 degrees Fahrenheit, 45.6 degrees Celsius! It was humid, too. Jason had always heard that Phoenix had a dry heat, but he was sweating in the humidity as he rolled his suitcase toward the bus stop for the Red Line that would take him to Arizona State University in the nearby suburb of Tempe. Unfortunately, he had arrived in Phoenix on the hottest day of the year at the peak of Arizona’s summer monsoon, when not only the heat but also the humidity become insupportable to those not acclimated to the Arizona desert.

      The others waiting for the bus seemed to be mainly airport employees. He could see some of the passengers who had been on the plane with him from Chicago lined up to take taxis. One of the people at the bus stop said, At least it’s a dry heat! The others chuckled. Jason was to learn later that his was a standing joke among Phoenix residents. People from out of state had the impression that Phoenix summers were dry and therefore perfectly comfortable. They had never suffered though the misery of Phoenix’s humid monsoon months of July and August.

      Jason had to wait 20 minutes for the bus to arrive, and by that time he was thirsty and sweating profusely. The others waiting for the bus didn’t seem to mind the heat as much as he did. Perhaps if one lived here long enough, one got used to this inferno. When the bus finally arrived, Jason handed the driver a five-dollar bill. The driver pointed to a sign that said Exact change only. Jason found a dollar bill in his wallet and attempted to hand it to the driver. Insert it in the cash box, the driver instructed him. Do you want a transfer?

      No thanks. Jason knew that this bus would take him directly to ASU. He carried his suitcases to the back of the bus and took a seat. At least the bus was air conditioned.

      When he got off the bus at his stop at the university in Tempe, the heat assaulted him again. In the information packet that the university admissions department had sent him was the name of the dormitory building where he was to live, but he had no idea how to find the building. There was no one on the sidewalk to ask. This wasn’t like Chicago, where the sidewalks were normally crowded with pedestrians. It looked like no one walked in Tempe. However, there were many young people who looked like students riding bicycles, despite the heat. Jason flagged one of them down.

      Say buddy, can you tell me how to get to Hayden Hall.

      Yeah, it’s about a block south of here. If you look at that map over there – pointing to a pillar about 15 feet away – you can see how to get there.

      OK, thanks.

      Jason was really thirsty by the time he reached his dormitory building. A drinking fountain at last, and the building was air-conditioned. With air conditioning everywhere, maybe he could learn to live with this heat after all.

      After slaking his thirst, he noticed a young woman sitting behind a desk with a sign in front of her reading Information. Hi. My name is Jason Wilder, and I believe I’m supposed to stay in this dorm.

      The young woman looked through a sheaf of papers on a clipboard. Ah, here we go. Wilder, Jason. Here, I’ll write down your room number, and here’s a key. You’ll be sharing a room with another student. Jason would have preferred a small apartment by himself, but a shared dorm room was the best his family could afford.

      If you have any questions, Jason, I’ll be right here. Don’t hesitate to ask.

      She had called him by his first name. Apparently people were more casual here than in Chicago.

      When he opened the door to his room, a tall, slender black youth was sprawled out on one of the bunks. He pointed to another bunk, which had a stained mattress. That’s yours.

      Jason looked around. The small dorm room wasn’t at all what he expected. There was graffiti scrawled on the walls. In addition to the bunks, there were two small writing tables, one of which Jason assumed was his, although both were piled high with dirty clothes. One thing for sure, Jason’s new roommate was not a neatness freak. Having grown up in highly-segregated Chicago, Jason was also not comfortable having a black roommate. It wasn’t that he was prejudiced. It was just that in Chicago blacks and whites led very separate lives. They worked different types of jobs, and they lived in different sections of the city.

      Jason later learned that his new roommate, James or Jimmy Jefferson, was from Johnstown, Pennsylvania. He was a year older than Jason. When he graduated from Johnstown Central High School, Jimmy didn’t have the funds to attend university. His parents hadn’t completed high school and had low-paying jobs. They were not able to help him very much with college expenses. However, Jimmy worked for a year as assistant physical director in the Johnstown YMCA while his parents allowed him to live at their home on Bedford Street for free. He saved enough during this year to travel to Phoenix and pay his first year’s tuition. He could have stayed in Johnstown and completed his first two years of at a junior college operated by the University of Pittsburgh, referred to by the locals as Junior Pitt, but the highly segregated living conditions in Johnstown felt claustrophobic. He knew enough about the Phoenix area to know that the city’s small black community was better integrated than was Johnstown’s, although Phoenix also had a few black-only neighborhoods, especially the area directly west of downtown. In need of financial aid, Jimmy was assigned to work 20 hours a week in the university cafeteria.

      You look uncomfortable, Jimmy remarked. Is it because I’m black?

      Jason decided not to lie. I’m not used to being around black people. I’ve never lived in the same neighborhood with a black person before, let alone in the same room."

      "I’m not used to being this close to white folks, either. In Johnstown, I mixed with white kids at the YMCA or in school, and in the evening, we all went home to our own neighborhoods. Most white people didn’t have the courage to enter a black neighborhood after dark. So, this is all new to

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