MARCH 25, 2026 – This morning, I drove to Buerkle Hyundai on the east side of town to have my car serviced. After checking in my Sonata, the service rep ushered me into the well-appointed customer waiting area well-stocked with edibles and beverages. I resisted temptation driven by my addictions to sugar, sodium and caffeine and proceeded to a corner where I could use my laptop to squeeze in some billable legal work.
On the approach, I observed the profile of a gentleman wearing a blazer but otherwise in circumstances parallel to mine: waiting for his vehicle to be serviced and hunched over a laptop in presumptive work mode. In profile, at least, he looked familiar, but if he was who I thought he was, he was curiously distant from his home on the west side of town. I figured that even if I’d judged his identity in error, maybe my inquiry would lead to conversation with an interesting fellow. I’m always eager to hear someone’s story.
“Bill?” I said. “Bill Brody?”
When he turned toward me, my old school non-AI facial identification app—ocular facility attached to (human) memory—immediately confirmed my guess.
I’ve known Bill for some 23 years. An attorney at Fredrikson & Byron, a prominent Minneapolis firm with which I’ve had many social and professional interactions over the decades, Mr. Brody, the dean of local estate planning lawyers, has long maintained his family’s northwoods retreat on our side of Grindstone Lake. Before today’s unexpected encounter, we hadn’t seen each other in quite some time.
My laptop never came out of its case, and our earnest conversation, focused mostly on politics, was so seamless we acknowledged but otherwise ignored the interruption by each of our service reps when they approached to say, “[Mr. Brody][Mr. Nilsson], your car is ready.”
Since before the turn of the century, my conversations with Bill have always involved politics, in part because we’re both political junkies; in part because we share a very similar worldview.
As we sat there today across the table that would see no legal work by either of us, despite our previous plans, we had plenty to discuss in animated speech. After blowing past the latest violations of civic and political norms, we addressed underlying causes, which inevitably included . . . “history.”
Then Bill broached an over-arching remedy—one I too have espoused for decades.[1] In three words, the idea is “universal national service.” I noted the political hurdles to adoption of such a far-reaching program. Bill was more sanguine and suggested that the initiative would fly if promoted heavily and publicly in a bi-partisan way by elder statespersons of the two major political parties.
Before we could map out details, Bill’s phone rang with a call he had to take. I too had business to which I needed to attend. With that, we waved good-bye to each other, and I headed out of the “comfort zone” of customer waiting and into the high-energy space of the service management crew to search for my rep, “Brian.”
Soon I was behind the wheel of my car, navigating through the labyrinthine sprawl of Buerkle’s [Kar Kingdom] (my words) to the hustle and bustle of the outside world. My conversation with Bill had given me lots to ponder. If the explanation for our nation’s current political condition is elusively complex, the sure-fire remedy that Bill proposed and I enthusiastically embraced—universal national service—could well be practicable, however arduous. An outline began to form inside my thoughts. On my midday walk I’d add flesh to the bones, but first, some background . . . (Cont.)
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© 2026 by Eric Nilsson
[1] I could swear I’ve written about this somewhere along the life of this blog site, but an exhaustive search yielded nothing.
1 Comment
YES!!