Chasing Drew Hastings by Drew Hastings

Author:Drew Hastings
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biograph and Autobiography: Political; Biography and Autobiography: Personal Memoirs; Humor: Celebrity and Pop Culture; Memoirs; True Stories: General; Municipal/City Government; Literary Essays
Publisher: Caleb Hill Press
Published: 2021-12-16T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

A Convergence of Sorts

Almost everyone who goes into politics does so because they planned to. They want to be in politics. Maybe they’re involved early on as an activist, or as a party organizer. They plot. They build. Maybe they start out as a city councilman, then a county commissioner, then state rep, maybe a run for state senator. They figure out how they might make the jump to congressman. These people always have an eye toward the next post. In fact, the only people I can think of that are in politics that didn’t plan to be there are those widows that you occasionally read about, whose husbands were senators or congressmen that suddenly dropped dead, and their political parties ask the spouses to fill out what’s left of the guys’ terms. But no one died and made me mayor. Yet again, a completely unexpected turn appeared in the road, and I just gunned it.

In June 2010, an old friend from Cincinnati, now a producer for Rocky Mountain PBS, flew in to talk to me about a project.

“Drew, I want to do a reality show about you and the farm.”

“Hmm.” Skeptical.

“It’ll have kind of a Green Acres feel, and to round it out we’ll cut to some of your standup and follow your dealings uptown with the historic building projects.”

“The idea of a reality show is as appealing as a bone marrow transplant.”

“I want this to feel like documentary, not reality TV. You have a lot of visibility in Hillsboro, we want to capture that too—the fish out of water aspect. Let’s shoot a pilot, see how it looks.”

I trusted John’s sensibility. “Okay, what can it hurt?”

Meanwhile, after two years of cajoling, I’d finally gotten my best friend of twenty-five years, Bob Lambert, to move to Hillsboro after he’d been laid off from working at an assisted living center out west. It was great having him around and I’d been showing him the town. One day he and I were walking up Main Street. Uptown Hillsboro was a sad affair. Four tattoo parlors, three used clothing consignment shops, two check cashing stores.

“Jesus, who the hell runs this place?” I said, waving my hand across the landscape, disgustedly. “I could do better than this,”

“So why don’t you?” said Bob.

In November, John came back to shoot footage for the pilot. Bob staked out locations around town and I’d show up, walking into a scene trying to keep it as natural and as improvisational as one can in the middle of a small town. One scene was in a diner. Locals were all seated on counter stools and in booths in that perfectly natural tableau that you see in every folksy Iowa caucus clip. The crew sat me on a stool and after a few observational snippets about Hillsboro’s woes, someone piped up: “Drew, everyone around here seems to know you. Heck, why don’t you run for mayor?”

I laughed. “That’ll be the day.”

“And cut!” said the director. Someone had prompted that guy to ask the question.

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