Randomness Redefined

I have returned from my trip to Jefferson City and I had a blast! My family and I had the once in a life time experience to stay at the Governor’s mansion. Now you are probably wondering how in the world I was able to do this aren’t you. Well it sure isn’t because we gave a bunch of money to the campaign that is for sure. As my parents are both extremely conservative the odds that they would donate money to a governor who is extremely liberal are pretty unlikely as far as I am concerned. No, this has something to do with friendship actually. Let me explain, my father and the current Governor of Missouri, Bob Holden went to Southwest Missouri State University together and Governor Holden was my father’s Resident Assistant and they became good friends. The friendship continued well after they had both graduated and started their professional lives.
I grew up knowing Governor Holden and for years I only knew him as Uncle Bob because he pretty much became another one of my uncles. Governor Holden has been active in Missouri politics for over 12 years and the culmination of his service to the state was his election to Governor about 4 years ago.

Now jump ahead to about a week ago when the Governor’s office called my parents house and told us to be in Jefferson City on the 6th. of January so that we could have dinner with the Governor and First Lady and that we would be given the opportunity to spend the night at the Governor’s Mansion. We had joked with the Holdens durning the whole term about spending the night and jokes were made about the whole Lincoln Bedroom controversy of President Clinton’s campaign. Personally, I never expected anything to come of it as Bob’s duties would most likely occupy him for his entire term. I guess things changed when Governor Holden lost his reelection campaign to Matt Blunt (Now the Governor and both houses are controlled by the Republicans so that will be different.) and the Holdens probably felt that since our families had remained friends even though my parents had differing political views than they did that we could come spend the night with them on their last weekend in office.

So Thursday rolls around and I scramble through work to make the 2pm deadline that my father had set (he kinda tends to chomp at the bit as it were when leaving for trips) and luckily I made it thanks to some covering by my co workers who I probably didn’t get a chance to thank properly. We made it to Jefferson City with time to spare and we checked in with security and we were shown to our rooms. We had to chill up on the third floor for awhile toll the Governor and First Lady returned and we could have dinner.

I want to take some time to describe what things looked like in my own meager way and just in case I fail I guess you can see things for yourself by visiting the site for the mansion(this site is not great and doesn’t seem to like firefox that much so be warned). I had expected that most of the mansion would be modernly furnished and that the visitor’s area would contain most of the historic pieces from the home. Boy was I wrong! The whole place was on big museum as well as having portions that were modernly furnished. I was blown away by how beautiful everything looked and the sense of history was a physical force in the air.

Dinner was great and the food was outstanding! I like food so bear with me ok, anyways it was nice to have some quiet time to spend with the Holdens and hear how life had been for them with so much public attention focused on everything they did and also it was just nice to see friends after being absent for many years. After dinner my family and I helped the Governor move some boxes of their personal items over to their newly purchased home (this is probably the real reason we were invited ;)) and then my parents went off to talk to the Holdens while my brother and I talked with their oldest son Robert. He seems to be an extremely intelligent and nice kid and he is far better behaved than the 7 year old I remember that tried to pull out all of my hair at a fund raising party many years ago! Also, he is extremely interested in computers and was in the process of building his own so I offered to lend him a hand since I have built so many computers that I have lost track! I managed to help him get everything mostly up and running and all that he will need to do is get some of the bells and whistles on his case working and he should be good to go I think. We finished helping him about midnight and then my brother and I went upstairs and used his wifi network to read articles and surf the net till we fell asleep.

This morning we woke up and headed over to the State Capital Building and got to see the Governor’s Office and send a few moments with my ‘uncle’ and to say our goodbyes and exchange contact information. Then my family headed over to the State Supreme Court building to see where my father served under the Attorney General when he graduated from law school and to see some of the sites, it was nice because I am rarely up in that part of the sate and I never have time to sight see (also it beat answering the phone all day. ;)). After that we drove home and that’s pretty much it I’m afraid. It was a once in a lifetime experience that I will treasure and as soon as possible I will put up our photos so you can see some better pics than what the website shows.