Lobbyist Charles Stenholm: “Grasshopper Killer”
Explains a lot.
GRASSHOPPER KILLERPolitically embattled Charlie Stenholm, 57, was definitely among friends that night, but even the longtime congressman couldn’t escape the sharp-pointed recollections offered up. Most tales told seemed guaranteed to leave their subjects red-faced.
Mark Lundgren, who was emceeing the evening, recalled how his aunt, Minnie Taylor, had spoken highly of Charlie from his earliest days. She valued her relationship with the Lord, idolized President John F. Kennedy and predicted Charlie Stenholm would be president some day.
She also liked to recall how, during long-ago cemetery cleanup days, little Charlie Stenholm and his cousin Jan would while away long hours by catching grasshoppers and pulling their appendages off. It was meticulous work, no doubt foreshadowing his work on the federal budget.
Anyway, it was during these times that Charlie’s mom, Irene, would spot her son, contemplate for a moment his amusement in the cemetery, and then say: “Now, Charlie, you kill those grasshoppers nicely!”
- “Even the boll weevils were ‘honored’ in little Ericksdahl,” Bill Whitaker, Copyright ©1996 or 1997, Abilene Reporter-News / Texnews / E.W. Scripps. Publications
