Senator Milford died last week at the tender age of 107. Nobody noticed. Like Shaharazad, he had survived a very long time by telling the tales he told rather than the deeds he'd done. Uncle Irk and Aunt Sassy knew a bit about both characters.

Uncle Irk remembers Senator Sam Milford without fondness. "He was always a bad egg. His dad was pretty wealthy and regularly paid folks off to keep his son out of trouble. In the end, his father understood that the only safe place left for Sam to be was in politics."

In his day the senator was quite a talker. Those old enough can remember his ramblings went on for hours expressing his opinion on something in which he never fully believed. In the end, no one had a clue to what he had said or, more importantly, his position on the matter. Everyone present wanted a vote just to find out the meaning of it all.

When the Senator began to speak his words had power, not unlike Shaharazad's endless stories casting a spell over King Shahryar.

As you may remember the King, jaded by the unfaithfulness of the previous queen, solved the problem of infidelity by terminating every new bride after their wedding night (I am sure there are some readers who want to know whether it was early or late into the honeymoon night). Shaharazad came up with a unique solution, the Dangling Story Arch. Better known today as Daytime Soap Operas.

She well knew the hypnotic power of storytelling and how to use words to confuse and cajole the mind in order to get something else out of the exchange. For her it was another day to breath, for Senator Sam Milford it was to get anything he wanted!

Now in spite of their rural upbringing, both Irk and Sassy's parents were determined that their children be educated proper in classic Literature. So while citified kids were reading "Howey the Unhappy Manatee Needs a New Home", they were wading through texts of Black Beauty, Peter Pan, The Yearling and 1001 Arabian Nights. Senator Sam's parents must have had similar inclinations. Somewhere he had learned the gift of gab could persuade.

"It is not important what you vote for," Senator Sam told a fellow senator once, "What is important is people associate you with the process... to think you are engaged, a player. If you keep an air of confidence, and speak loudly, everyone will always assume that you know what the heck you are talking about and will be afraid to ever challenging you. After a while folks will figure that nothing can get done unless you put your two cents in." He was right because every time a committee was formed it was always, "Senator Sam and others" who were always suggested.

Senator Sam knew that by being entertaining he had influence, and influence leads to more responsibility, and responsibility leads to power and, power leads to big payoffs. He had money enough from his family business but he always felt that honest money was tainted somehow; that a dollar earned as a bribe was worth more in defining oneself than a dollar earned honestly. "When you work for a living, someone pays you to do something that anyone else could probably do. But when someone pays you for your influence, it is an individual's greatest compliment!"

Uncle Irk and Aunt Sassy never agreed on anything. The only thing of a political nature the two of them might agree on was: Anything a politician ever says is usually meant to mean something else that they really cannot afford to say.

Irk and Sassy raised chickens, always had, and if a chicken conversation ever came up it was sure to steer around to that 'one-eyed rooster'. Uncle Irk would try to characterize the rooster as a typical politician, bad to the bone, just like Senator Milford. Aunt Sassy would just say that rooster was only a chicken that circumstance made bad. She had a way of balancing out Irk's 'half empty' perspective of things with her more accommodating nature. She gave that rooster many benefits-of-doubts, until one day, after having too many times tried her wits, she wopped it to death with a shovel.

To both Sam Milford was just another chicken, nothing more.

"Politics are for men folk who have no other outlet for their ambitions," she was heard saying once to a bunch of her lady friends. Sassy got a nod from them that day and a chuckle. But she said it not to be cute. It was a rare insight into her larger opinion that time was better spent getting something in return than not, "No politician ever put a chicken in my pot or gave me a roof to keep me warm and dry but, they sure enough are eager to take every other last thing else I got."

She akinned it all to the likings of that old one-eyed rooster. "If'n you didn't keep him by hisself during feeding times, he would steal every last bit of corn from the others. It weren't that he was hungry, just ornery and wanted as much as he could grab. The rest of the day he wobble around real slow from all the 'tax-feed' in his belly with a smirk on its face that made you want to smack it off."

"But Lordy, those hens still loved that rooster so," she had to admit. She figured that he had a way of sweet talking them hens to the point that they forgot what he really was like-just like old Sam Milford, just like innocent Shaharazad, They all knew well how to use words to their favor.

It was easy for Irk and Sassy to relate that rooster to the late Senator Sam Milford and politicians in general, though come away with quite different conclusions.

Uncle Irk believed the responsibility of the voters was not to reward and punish. It was well known who he would vote for in any upcoming election without asking. "Throw all the bums out!" he would say without discrimination to race, sex or party affiliation. "Even a fine person, with the best intentions, becomes tainted once they swim in the sewer," he figured.

But, Aunt Sassy figured different. She believed that some folks, like Senator Milford, were so bad that the best place for them to be was caged up there at the Capitol, away from normal folk. "You don't want people with ambitions like that running around free in our fine community. You want to keep them away from work'n folks to where they can do the least harm...where we can keep a wary eye on them and rattle their cage every once in awhile just to let them know they are being watched."

It doesn't mean they will listen all the time. That one-eyed rooster never did, neither did Senator Sam. But most folks figure that the King finally found true love, lulled by the soothing words of Shaharazad.

Aunt Sassy was educated enough to understand that words can be used either way: to help only the one saying them or, for the good of those who might have a listen.