I Have The Congressional Medal of Honor. Where’s My Wonderful Life? By Harry Bailey

Every year during the holidays, people settle in to watch and re-watch the touching story of my brother, George Bailey, learn that “no man is a failure who has friends”. Well, I’m in that story and I’m here to tell you, that movie is a load of horse shit. I was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. Where’s my movie?

First of all, this business about George losing his hearing in one ear from saving me when I fell into the ice is nonsense. Any doctor worth their salt will tell you that you cannot catch a cold from exposure to the elements. I was in the icy water longer than he was and my ears were just fine. If anything, he caught the cold from not eating his vegetables. That ear thing ended up keeping him from going to war like Bert, Marty, Ernie and me, but whatever. A cold is a virus, not an evil curse that hides in ice water. He probably caught it from that stupid megaphone he was always yelling at me with.

Look, I love my brother, but where was he when Pop had the stroke? I’m racing all over town looking for George during the last minutes of my father’s coherence to find my sainted brother holding a naked teenager against her will in the hydrangea bushes. I mean, what kind of sick bargain was about to happen there?

Did you see the part in the movie where George came to watch me play football at college where I made Second Team All-American? No? That’s because he never did. I played there for four years. The campus was an hour-and-a-half away by train. Even Sam Wainright made it to a game, and that guy was an asshole.

Maybe a movie about me wouldn’t have skimmed over my offer to take over the Building and Loan from George. Maybe my movie would have showed George begging me to let him stay after I mentioned I would have put Uncle Billy in charge of jigsaw puzzles instead of handling all the financial assets. Maybe my movie would have shown me asking George to stop referring to my wife as a “peach”.

A film about my life would have spent more time showing what I went through in the War. I shot down 15 planes and two of them were about to crash into a troop transport. The film failed to mention that I was out of fuel and on fire while I did it. No big deal. After all, it was the fire and the fuel part that clinched me getting The Congressional Medal of Honor. Who wouldn’t want to see that?

When President Truman hung that medal around my neck, he asked if Ma was my only living family because all the other recipients had a big crowd of people. I told the President that George didn’t feel like making the trip even though the Navy was paying for it. Truman felt so bad he asked his wife to take Ma to lunch before they her home. Little did I know, George was busy giving money to Violet Bick for some reason and NOT depositing the lifeblood of the family business at the bank.

Instead, George entrusts our goofy Uncle Billy with enough money to buy almost two homes in Bailey Park. Look, I love him, but Billy needs a map to cross the street to the bank, and another map to get back. I would bet the squirrels in Uncle Billy’s office would have had a better chance of depositing that cash than Billy did. 

But, you know, it’s all about George. He has half of a bad day where he screams at his family, gets drunk, and plows his ancient car into a tree before deciding to throw himself off a bridge. Oh, the drama! Seven hours of panic and he completely falls to pieces.

Keep in mind, I know none of this as I arrive home from receiving the highest honor our military can bestow for bravery above the call of duty. I walk in to find half of the town literally lined up to dump piles of money at my brother’s feet, for nothing more than running the family business into the ground. 

By the way, I ended up taking over the Bailey Building and Loan. I used things like “math” and “accounting” to build it into a chain of 14 locations and bought Old Man Potter’s predatory-lending bank for pennies on the dollar. It may have been what finally killed him.

I mean, come on! Who wouldn’t want to see that scurvy little spider ruined just before he died? That’s how “American Hero: The Harry Bailey Story” would have ended.