I have no links, nothing hilarious to say. I figure everyone and their mother is going to describe the goings on of this the greatest quadrennial non-holiday of our country. So why not me?
I woke up this morning same as I always do. I'm the first to get up, and it's usually just before 7 a.m. So I did. I shaved. I took a bath. Well, I took a shower, but whenever I describe cleansing my external self, I say "take a bath." So I took a shower, I dried off. I woke up our son, frog-marched him into his mother's room so he could start putting his clothes on. While putting on my work clothes, I chose a button-down gingham shirt, khaki cargo pants, tan socks, brown belt, brown shoes. Generally what I always wear. I went downstairs, walked into the kitchen, wiped up the catshit on the kitchen floor, turned the coffee on. Gave my son his adderall. Meanwhile, mom's shuffling upstairs and our daughter is, too. I put my sandwiches in a sack. I took my vitamins. poured a bowl of fiber-rich cereal. Poured the coffee, poured the milk, moved it all to the coffee table in the living room. Flipped on Bloviatin' Joe, alternated between CNN. Upon the threat of Rudy 9/11iani making his 36th straight appearance on Bloviatin' Joe, I stayed with CNN.
Then I brushed my teeth. Gargled. At 7:50, Our son and I left the house, got into the truck, backed out of the driveway, and headed out to the Jewish Community Center, about a mile away, to vote.
And then 4 1/2 hours later, I voted.
I live in a suburb of Columbia, SC, a partially affluent, partially working-class (my family) area. I must say that I did not expect to see cars parked up and down the main road. Nor did I expect to see a line of people to snake out well into the parking lot. The last two times I voted in my precinct, in June for a senate/congress primary and of course Jan. 19 for the democratic primary, I pretty much parked the car, got out, gave the workers my registration card, walked up to the little ballot box and pushed one, two buttons. I didn't think that I would see a line, not in this precinct.
Yet there it was, in all its glory. How I longed to see it! Having shopped routinely at Wal-Market and having done time in the army, I've grown quite accustomed to standing in lines, and I'm not ever thrilled about the prospect. Yet in this case I was. I had seen footage of a helicopter camera fly over lines of Cleveland, Ohio, voters standing in line during the 2004 election. I had seen footage of the lines in Florida, I had seen footage of lines in Pennsylvania, lines in Michigan, lines in all the swing states. Yet in my 20 years of voting, I have never seen a line more than three or four people long in South Carolina. Ever.
I called my father, who's been through a lot more elections than I ever have, and he said he waited to vote at his heavily retiree-composition precinct for an hour. He had never seen his precinct, or any precinct for that matter, this busy. I called a coworker telling her where I was this morning, and urging her to vote before the evening crush. If the line was this long in the off-hours, it was going to be extra long when everyone begins knocking off work.
At my estimate, the line when I entered it was 1,000 feet long. (I do love when I bring my surveyor skills to bear on an immediate event.) Translated, it was about two tenths of a mile. Along that two tenths of a mile, people like me who had brought their children, as well as eligible-voter family members had thickened the line considerably. It was more like a double or triple file. Admittedly, when I stood in line, I did notice its stagnance. My stomach shriveled up. I was daunted. I'm not even going to get Pink Floyd Tickets when I finish.
Off-topic, my son is not just an average spirited boy. Thank God for Adderol. He's been diagnosed with ADHD, his latest psychiatrist thinks that he may have asperger's syndrome, and my wife and I swear he's got all the signs of being bipolar. Lately he's been having problems with his random fist-throwing and his obvious discomfort with his sister, so yes, when I saw the line I knew I had to stand in it with a boy who would likely rip my arms off, or knock this tired senior citizen in front of us.
He didn't. I quickly got over my stomach shriveling feeling, and resolved to myself that I would wait it out. It's easy for me. When your choice is standing in line to vote versus sitting in a cubicle to stare at a computer for eight hours, you stand in line. It moved slowly. Actually it seeped. At one point, I stared off into space for an hour and didn't even realize that I shuffled about 200 feet.
I never really lose faith in people. Sure they do rotten things, like murder trick-or-treaters, beat their wives, deal drugs to kids, and beat their kids. When people stand in a line that hardly moves over the course of two or three hours, you would expect cursing, swearing, or at the very least, talk about "my candidate is better than your candidate," and at the very most, fear talk, the rumors that always get talked about.
None of this, of course, happened. None of this happened because, as I go to bed every night thinking it, most all people want to live quiet lives, earn a little money, contribute to a community, have a little fun, and see to their children's future. I saw nothing today to extinguish this understanding I have with other American people.
Just after we had arrived, a man came out to tell us that all 10 machines were working, there were no problems, and the line was about as long as was expected. A former journalist, I saw nothing that could be problemesque, except maybe they could've had 15 or 16 machines instead. Meh. I don't know how to plan these things.
My calm and curious son and I stood, and stood, and stood, and stood. We had no books. I don't know how to use a cellphone to play games. We had nothing at all to entertain ourselves except for our delight in watching other people. There were no ill feelings toward anyone in line. There were no incidents. There was a great deal of talk among families. Sisters called sisters, wives called husbands, friends called friends, reporting their experience in line, comparing it with others who were standing in the same kind of line at a different precinct. Smokers who were registered voters stepped out of line and smoked a safe distance away. When they came back, their spots were saved. There were no port-a-johns, no donut trailers, no fast food snack trucks of any kind. Yet no one complained. If people needed to weedle or take a dump, they merely walked into the community center, laid their thing down, and came back to the spot in line that they left.
My son chose not to wear his jacket. So when the wind started to blow a little colder, I took off mine and wrapped it around him like a poncho. When it started up a steady drizzle, we huddled next to each other as better-thinking people popped open their umbrellas. I'm not an umbrella person anyway, so I didn't think much of it. My son, who catches colds right easily, would've liked one. Before I thought to ask, a woman who was going back to her car to put her umbrella away lent me hers. We used it for nearly two hours before she needed it back. It stopped raining by then, but her unselfishnesss saved my son a head cold at the least.
By then we reached the free coffee and tea stand, and gave my son a hot cup of tea, which he sucked down like it were chocolate milk. My wife called me when my son and I reached the door. She was in our line, about two hours behind us. Maybe 300 feet. Time and distance. "We're finally at the door," I told her. "I think we've got another hour after we get in here, though." Sure enough, it was 11 a.m. by then, and I did not beep my electro-ballot in until 12:25 p.m.
Once done, my son and I walked in the returning rain, past all the McCain-Palin and Obama-Biden signs that were going to be useless tonight. All that wasted paper. All those wasted billions of dollars, money spent maintaining good positions with the public, money spent paying newspapers and television stations, catering companies, hotels and campaign staffs. As we walked across the busy road and then up the hill, past newly built duplexes and several under construction, past a crew working their ass off to electric-staple these prefab slab houses together before the harder rains come, my son pointed out aloud just about everything that moved, hummed, or didn't move or hum. The workers, the houses, the house numbers and letters on the finished duplex, the dirt, the water, a washed out receipt book lying in a ditch.
Now, hours before the election reports are in, I'm at home. My son was upstairs watching the cartoon Jedi Bullshit thing, but he got tired of it and went out on his bicycle. The day is shot. My back hurts, my feet hurt, it's a little cold and rainy.
The pains in my back are minimal. Those pains I feel are the sweet pangs of freedom. The thin line of umbrellas and old men and women and young men and women, waiting to cast a vote, seemed stronger than the sharpest line of M1A3 Abrams tanks in the American arsenal. I hope, at the very least, other people in my meaninless state take note of today, that the power-from-the-people state constitution, and the dreary idea of politics in the state house, ought not to deny the essential power of the people, which is to decide our own fate, yea or nay.
I hope this is a new beginning.