Vance’s PR team attempt to reverse tanking ratings with serialized ‘common man’ fluff piece
Vance grew up on a small farm in rural Ohio. He recalls a very normal, down-to-earth upbringing. He went to Sunday church with his Mamaw and Papaw, played high-school softball with friends Jason and Freddie, bit the heads off live frogs, and watched movies with his sister in the local cinema.
Interviews with his high school friends paint a picture of an honest, genuine young man, but also an ambitious idealist who wanted more than a small town in Ohio could offer. It is around these formative years that he met his first love. Though his grandparents didn’t exactly approve, there was no discouraging the young JD from pursuing Estelle. She was a petite, blue velvet upholstered Chesterfield two-seater with a tan chamois trim.
In the months that followed Vance was at his happiest. He would later admit that laying on Estelle, gazing up at the twinkling Ohio stars in post-coital bliss, shaped his entire moral and political worldview. He took a job as a furniture removal assistant to pay for his way through night school, and so that they could find a little place of their own.
Although the temptations were great – there were sleek leather recliners, pert poofs, sumptuous velour three-piece sets – the then incorruptible Vance returned each day with head unturned. Friends would tease him about his unswerving loyalty to Estelle, to which he’d reply cryptically ‘The plumper the cushion, the better the pushin”.
The years of joy would come to sudden and tragic end. A removal van she was travelling in was side-swiped by a VW camper van with California plates and a ‘Save the Whales’ bumper sticker. The truck left the road, flipped several times, and burst into flames. The VW camper driver disappeared in a cloud of aromatic smoke and was never found. The young Vance was overwhelmed by grief.
Where there had once been steely resolve, there was now fawning obsequiousness. Where there were once resolute principles, there was now capricious opportunism. Where there was once the adroit ordering of ice-cream, there was now confusion, anguish and awkward exchanges of pleasantries.
Vance self-destructed. He slept on Chaise Lounges, Sectionals, Lawsons and Cabrioles, but none gave him the love and support that Estelle had given him.
Come back next week for Part 2.
