As a Milwaukee reporter, I like many of my colleagues thought of Clement J. Zablocki (1912-1983) as that stocky ethnic Congressman from the Polish, Serbian, Croat, Ukrainian, Hungarian, Czech, Slovak, etc., South Side of Milwaukee. I had covered a speech of his right after the aborted Cuban Invasion when he assured his audience that the U.S. would invade again. In short, my original opinion was not high.
I first caught sight of his wit on the first day I ever spoke to him directly. He called on a snowy early March day in Milwaukee. Could I come over right away to talk about a job?
“I am just getting into the shower,” I replied. “Will there be time for that?”
“It all depends on how dirty you are,” Zablocki quipped.
There would be many other instances of Clem’s wit over the years.
In 1962 during visit by President Kennedy to Milwaukee, his motorcade from the airport was delayed at a intersection in the South Side. Zablocki was seated next to him. From the crowd a man shouted: “Hey Clem, who’s your friend?”
Kennedy heard the jibe. “Clem, is this your district? “ the President asked.
“Hell,” Mr. President,” he replied, “most of these people are my relatives.”
With Milwaukee being crazy for parades, the congressman often was asked to ride in an open car through city streets, waving to the crowd. At one of the frequent delays, a bystander shouted to him: “Zablocki, you bum, they won’t give me Social Security.” It got very quiet in the vicinity.
Unfazed by the attack, Clem shouted back: “Of course not, you’ve got to go to work first.” The crowd convulsed in laughter.
On another occasion while we were doing the perfunctory sidewalk campaigning he was willing to do just once per election campaign, he left off shaking hands of passersby and headed into a local department store to buy a pair of shoes. Helplessly, I followed.
It was difficult to steer voters to him amid the racks of clothes but as a faithful spear-carrying campaign coordinator, I tried. “Would you like to meet your congressman,” I would whisper conspiratorially to housewives busying themselves in the undies department. Most just looked at me.
At last I came across a rather flamboyantly dressed lady who replied: “Oh, Zablocki, I have never met Zablocki. I would love to meet him.”
Just then the congressman, fresh from shoe buying, hove into view. “There’s a constituent over here who is dying to meet you,” I told him. With a politician’s instinct for a voter, Zablocki followed.
As soon as she saw him, her face fell in disappointment. “Oh, you’re such a short man.” she cried, “My first husband was a short man. I don’t like short men.”
Zablocki was quick to reply: “Lady,” said he, “I just want your vote, I don’t want to marry you.”
In his congressional duties Clem could be insightful. One of his colleagues in the House, Congressman Clarence Long, was well known in the House for his oddball behavior and opaque speeches. But he boasted a Ph.D. and liked to be addressed as “Doctor Long.”
“He is living proof,” Zablocki asserted frequently, “that individuals can be educated beyond their capacity.”
Clem also shared the general feeling in the House that the members of the Senate, usually referred to as “the other body,” had attitudes of superiority not validated in performance. He frequently was a House member of a conference committee on a bill with the Senate and found it frustrating that Senators who had not read the legislation spent inordinate time pontificating about it.
“The problem with senators,” Clem said, “is that too many of them get out of bed, look into the bathroom mirror, and say, ‘Good morning Mr. President.”
Later when I had graduated from his personal staff to being his subcommittee director, we traveled in 1970 with two other congressmen to Latin America to review military assistance and other matters. One of the two was Jim Fulton, a wealthy Republican from Pennsylvania with a reputation for eccentricity. It also was whispered that he was gay.
During a visit to CINCSOUTH, the U.S. military presence in the Panama Canal Zone, which then was still firmly in American hands, we were housed overnight in the officer guest quarters. As chairman, Zablocki was given a room of his own. I was to stay in a double room with Fulton.
The implications were clear. When the story got around that I had stayed the night with Fulton, innocent as it probably would be, the ribbing would have been merciless. I went to Clem: “They’ve put me in with Fulton.”
He saw the problem immediately. “There’s an extra bed in my room. You can stay with me,” he said. I breathed easier. Clem went off to explain the change to Fulton, claiming that he needed me to help with a speech he was to give the next day.
In matter of fact I went out for a late night of dinner and drinking with an old friend who was stationed in the Canal Zone. When I rolled in about 2 a.m., somewhat unsteady, Zablocki was in bed asleep and the room was pitch black. Trying to sneak in quietly, I stumbled over an end table and sent an ashtray skittering over the wooden floor.
Out of the darkness came a familiar voice: “Maybe you should have stayed with Fulton.”
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