When John Ashcroft was thirteen, he bicycled up to the local Dairy Queen in Springfield, Missouri and asked if there was any work he could do for the place. The owner told him he could clean up the parking lot, and Ashcroft did so willingly. The DQ owner ended up hiring him, and Ashcroft worked at the franchise for quite a while. They remained good friends, and while Ashcroft was the governor of Missouri, the DQ owner presented him with a soft-serve ice cream freezer as a gift, for old times' sake. To this day, an autographed glossy of Ashcroft hangs in a respected place in that Dairy Queen, right up the street from me.