I Was a Teen-Age Mayor

As soon as Jody Smith assumed the mayoralty of Ayrshire, Iowa (pop. 300), three months ago, things began to, well, hop. The first thing he did was take $800 from the budget to spruce up the rundown town hall--including patching a wall at which, in a burst of boyish spirit, several of his Boy Scout troop had once thrown a fellow member. Toughly impartial, he recently fined his 17-year-old brother, Len, $24 for illegal possession of beer. He has spearheaded several long-needed reforms, such as jacking up the town speed limit from 10 m.p.h. to 25 m.p.h. and scrapping the ordinance regulating bowling alleys (there is not now, nor has there ever been, a bowling alley in Ayrshire). He has even offered to perform a marriage--although he himself could not be married without his father's consent. Mayor Smith is 19 years old.

The youngest mayor in the U.S. first caught campaign fever in 1964 during the Republican National Convention. "I liked the hubbub," he says. "It seemed like fun." Jody displayed a flair for leadership at Ayrshire High School, where he was an honor student, manager of the baseball and basketball teams, student council president (during which term he waged a successful campaign to convert one of the classrooms into a student lounge) and school janitor. He suffered his first political setback his senior year, when he lost his bid for the class presidency.

Gyp Joint. Undiscouraged, Jody decided last fall to challenge incumbent Mayor Elmer B. Swanson, 72. He could have rounded up sufficient petition signatures (twelve) within the Smith family, but opted instead for some house-to-house campaigning. "I talked a lot about the problem of frost boils in the streets," he says. "My theme was that it was time for a change."

The town's 144 registered voters obviously admired Jody's style. In a 96% turnout (a fair portion of the abstainers were at a family funeral), Jody swept to a 48-vote victory over Swanson.

A solid Nixon Republican who stands 6 ft. 3 in., Jody has already caught the eye of Midwestern politicians. Although Governor Robert Ray was in Spain when Jody was inaugurated, he sent a congratulatory wire. Of course nobody is prouder of Jody's achievement than his fun-loving father Elmer ("They call me toothless Elmer"), whose gas station bears such puckish legends as ELMER'S GYP JOINT and GOD BLESS THIS MORTGAGED STATION.

Jody's schedule as a $240-a-year mayor is even more demanding than one might suppose. A freshman at nearby Emmetsburg Community College, Mayor Smith drives a 24-mile school bus route twice daily, before and after commuting to school. On days when he is busy studying or meeting with the five-man town council, he turns the bus chores over to Brother Len--who presumably picks up enough extra change thereby to pay his beer fines.

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