The Old Man sat in the same recliner he claimed every Friday night when he and my grandmother stopped by to visit, and the conversation soon turned to the past Tuesday’s election.
“We canceled each other out,” he announced, jerking his thumb at his wife, who was already giving him a bad look. “I knew we were going to.”
“Why did y’all go vote then?” I asked, for it seemed a logical question. It was one apparently more difficult to answer than to ask. Attempts from everyone present wandered far and wide without coming in sight of any conclusion I could see, and I wanted to see, I did. I was a kid but already in the questioning business, and nothing made me question harder than an obviously evasive answer.
My cadre of Old Men had all served in World War II, this I knew. They had risked their lives to protect our country’s freedom, and this I also thought I knew. Part of that freedom was and is the right to vote, and so this particular Old Man had gone and voted, taking with him to the poll a voter he knew would be canceling him out, then afterward bringing her back home.
“That still doesn’t make any sense,” I argued, “because the election was just between two guys nobody liked anyway. It’s not like the vote was for whether or not to stay free, and besides, you knew you were canceled out even if it was.”
The impracticality of the act was what had me stymied, because these two children of the Great Depression, the Old Man in particular, adhered to practicality the way duct tape adheres to anything you didn’t mean for it to touch. They saved empty jars and paper bags. They saved used aluminum foil from baked potatoes. They didn’t waste time and they didn’t waste money and they certainly didn’t do both at once.
Finally the Old Man, who typically never, ever, made reference to his own military service, put it in terms I could understand.
“I went and voted because I could,” he said, gently. “The war was about being free. I don’t know if we wouldn’t have had our freedom without fighting the war, but the folks over there in countries that had been taken over, they didn’t have freedom anymore. I was voting so we don’t end up like those folks, or like the folks we were fighting. It wasn’t who I was voting for, or against, but just that I could vote. That’s the difference.”
It would make sense to me to hold election day after Veterans Day, to remind everyone what the Old Men and countless others did, to remind us to do our small part to maintain it, whether we were being canceled out or not.
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 47 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
