A Simple Christmas by Mike Huckabee Page A

I truly believe that much of my own competitive spirit was developed during those checkers sessions with Uncle Garvin, because the old man didn’t really understand how impolite it was to beat the daylights out of a sensitive little boy like me in a board game. Uncle Garvin played to win, and he usually did, until, after getting beat by him over and over, I got better and eventually even learned to beat him occasionally. At the time, I hated that he made easy play of me and actually seemed to relish beating a little kid in checkers, but in reality, he did me a great favor by making me hungry for victory and giving me the greatest thrill of all when I finally achieved it. This might be hard to believe for many of the hand-wringing whiners out there today who are so afraid of injuring a child’s self-esteem that they’ve created a society in which “everyone gets a trophy” and no one loses no matter how little they practiced or how poorly they performed. This is the recipe for creating incompetent CEOs who, when their companies fail miserably, rush to the government to rescue them because they are “too big to fail.” It’s also created total idiots in government who think they are doing these poor businesses, as well as the rest of us, a favor by bailing out the losers at the expense of the winners so everything will be “fair.” Call me crazy, but I believe there’s something to be said for competition and for rewarding hard work, talent, and intelligence instead of laziness, incompetence, and stupidity.
    Not that Uncle Garvin was mindfully trying to build in me an obsession with excellence or a hunger to succeed, but he stoked a fire in me to learn from failure and to ultimately believe that my greatest victories were the ones that followed a string of failures against the same foe. I’m lucky. I had someone who taught me this valuable lesson as a kid. Some parents today try to shield their children from the “pain and trauma” of losing. I don’t think they realize that no matter how hard they try, these kids are going to grow up one day and learn this lesson the hard way. But by that time they’ll be unprepared to face failure. God help us!
    Since Uncle Garvin didn’t own a car, he walked a lot. It’s not like he couldn’t afford a car, but I think in his mind, it was an expense he could do without. When he was at our house, it meant that we walked a lot too, because if we were going to hang out with him, we would spend a good part of the day walking around town to do whatever errands there were to do.
    A part of Uncle Garvin’s daily routine was walking to Jack’s News Stand on the corner of First Street and Main just across the street from the Missouri Pacific train depot in Hope. Jack’s was a grimy little store that always smelled like cigars and fresh popcorn. Cigars and popcorn don’t make the most desirable aroma, but they sure create a memorable one! Jack’s was Hope’s main place to buy newspapers other than the local daily paper, The Hope Star , which was so small that instead of being rolled, it was often folded wallet size so it could be thrown easily by the kids on bikes who delivered the paper each afternoon. To get “real” papers, like the ones from Little Rock, Shreveport, or Texarkana, one had to go to Jack’s. This was also true for magazines like Time , Newsweek , or U.S. News & World Report , although in those days, more people read Life , Look , and Reader’s Digest (two of which don’t even exist now). Jack’s also had racy magazines like Playboy , which were kept behind the counter. Young guys knew they were there, but they also knew that if they attempted to buy one in the name of their “dad” or “older brother,” Jack, the proprietor, would simply ask “Dad’s” name (though he probably already knew it, since Hope was so small) and pick up the