“. . . go forth in love and peace — be
kind to dogs — and vote Democratic"
Guess who said that.
The first year of my brief first marriage was also the year
of the first Presidential election I was able to vote in. 1972. Nixon had one term under his belt. Muskie, McCarthy, and McGovern were struggling for the
democratic nomination against each other and more importantly against George
Wallace, an unrepentant racist who might as well have had horns growing out of
his forehead as far as I was concerned. I was still a teenager, but old enough to get married and -- since the voting age
had been lowered to 18 the previous year -- old enough to
vote.
Stuart had left his job at Lockheed in Los Angeles the year before to come home and farm with his father. When we got married in December of 1971, I quit school half-way through my
sophomore year in college to move from Austin (which had recently given birth to weird) to
Roby (which was then and still is in a dry – and I don’t mean arid -- county
smack dab in the philosophical heart of the Bible belt). We moved into the first house Stuart
had ever lived in – a two-bedroom, stucco, shotgun house five miles east of
town; a hundred yards from Stuart’s grandparents’ larger, lovelier home; half a
mile from his parents; a stone’s throw from the massive barn which was no
longer used for anything except storing defunct tools and some hay. Our house, like the barn, suffered from
neglect, having stood empty on the wind-blown plains for over a decade. In spite of that Stuart was tickled to
be home, shed of the defense industry job that had got him a draft deferment. And I was
naïvely happy to accept things, like what house I lived in or the political
habits of my new in-laws, without question. The house faced south toward the highway which hurled
whining semi-trucks and speeding cars past us on a straight shot from Fort
Worth to Hobbs, New Mexico. Behind
us was a field planted in cotton, cradled on two sides by the Clear Fork of the
Brazos.
Inside the house, Stuart and I were cracking open the lid on
Pandora’s box. This isn’t a story
about addiction or misspent youth or the many troubles we let loose in our
lives way back when, though. It’s
about politics.
We couldn’t go on a honeymoon after the wedding because the
cotton hadn’t been harvested yet.
Back then you couldn’t harvest cotton until after the first freeze had
killed the plants, and there had not been a freeze in the fall of 1971. The first freeze of the winter came in
January launching every farmer in the county into the hardest job in the
cotton-farming cycle – stripping.
Stuart and the hired hand spent painfully cold days, working their way
through acres of cotton, taking turns driving the stripper or standing in the
trailer behind to stomp the cotton down into the trailer bed before the howling
wind blew it away. It was a bitter
piece of physical labor. But
that’s the way it was done.
Then. In 1972 there were
not even any air-conditioned tractors in Fisher County. Everyone plowed in an open-air
tractor and harvested in an open-air stripper without even the benefit of
radios. Sometime in 1973,
Stuart got wind of a new tractor on the market, a John Deere with an enclosed,
air-conditioned and heated cab. He
immediately began lobbying for one.
But his father, who was his partner and no longer spent anytime on a
tractor himself, thought it was an unnecessary extravagance.
Stuart’s father was an archetype right out of a Southern
gothic novel – big, powerful, demanding, smart. He had been a Senator in the state legislature and had run
for Congress. He was also the Chairman of the Fisher County Democratic Party, a
position he took seriously. He
believed that politics was a serious business.
Come primary day in the spring of 1972, everyone in Stuart’s
family – mother, father, grandparents, sons, daughters, daughter-in-law – went
to the courthouse for the precinct convention, which, as anyone who’s ever been
to their precinct convention knows, did not warrant the name “convention.” Maybe twenty people gathered in a
conference room upstairs in the courthouse. About half of them were my relatives so it wasn't exactly intimidating.
When the time arrived to declare which candidate you supported for the Democratic nomination, I came out in favor of McGovern. I found out on the drive home that Stuart considered that an act of naivete. He had remained undeclared -- I think others in his family did, too -- a move he thought improved his chance of being elected as a delegate to the state convention in San Antonio. The way the Stuart explained it, if the Wallace supporters didn’t know who you actually did support they might think that you supported their candidate and vote for you as a delegate. I doubt that anyone in Fisher County was that dumb. Even the Wallace supporters. It was no secret that Stuart’s family leaned to the left, and Stuart had a pony tail. It didn’t really matter though. No one else was interested in going to the convention so Stuart and his brother were unanimously elected as delegates just on the basis of announcing their availability.
Although McGovern did ultimately get the nomination, I doubt it was because of the maneuverings of savvy supporters in the heartland. But honestly, there was enough at stake with Wallace as a contender to make any effort to block him worthwhile. And who knows? So many trivial and important things were at play. Muskie cried, for God’s sake. Actually, I think his voice just cracked, but apparently that was enough to get you run out of town on a rail in 1972. Someone shot Wallace a week after the precinct convention. Funny to think that both those events had the same impact on the candidacy of those two men.
Everyone in Stuart’s family was pleased with McGovern’s
nomination. I was, too. McGovern was against the war which was
the issue I cared about. The war,
the draft, and the atrocities of war that we glimpsed every night on the 6
o’clock news. Those were the
things I cared about.
I’d never heard of Agent Orange in 1972 so I didn’t know to
care about that. I wouldn’t hear
about Operation Ranchhand and the chemical defoliant U.S. troops were using in
Vietnam for tactical purposes until long after the war was over. I remember now, though, that the
hottest topic of conversation at the Fisher County Farmers Union meeting in the
summer of 1972 was the new product the Treflan salesman was peddling – a
defoliant that worked. The
conversation only penetrated the periphery of my consciousness. I didn’t want to be at the Farmer’s
Union meeting, but, like the precinct convention, skipping it did not appear to
be an option in Stuart's family. I had no interest in or opinion about any topic of
conversation at the meeting including defoliants or anything else to do with
the farm. I knew more about what
was going on in Vietnam than I knew about the farm. But I find it interesting now to look back and realize that
by the mid-70s none of the farmers in Fisher County had to wait for the first
freeze to strip cotton. Sometime around 1972 they started using defoliants which meant that the cotton could be
harvested in the fall. By that time the defoliant they were using had been field test thoroughly in Vietnam.
Stuart didn’t strip cotton in the fall of ‘72, though. He and I had moved back to
Austin that September so that he could begin law school and I could pick up my undergraduate
education right where I had left off -- studying too little, barely squeaking
by academically, partying too much.
We went to hear music a couple of times a week. We saw movies constantly. I had lunch every day in the Chuckwagon,
a cafeteria style restaurant on the ground floor of the Student Union; I would often
miss classes to sit in the Chuckwagon all afternoon talking about politics or
books or time travel with other students who fancied themselves students of
life and could argue passionately that institutional structures and strictures
(like classrooms and classes scheduled at particular times) actually interfered
with real learning. Sometimes I
would tell people that I went to the University of Chuckwagon which I thought
was a pretty funny joke. I loved
the Union – smoked cigarettes and read in the corridor upstairs, listened to
music at Potpouri which is now the Cactus Café, and went to all the lectures. That’s how I saw Linda Jenness, the
Socialist Workers’ Party candidate for President, speak. I left that lecture all fired up,
feeling elated that finally a candidate had articulated my thoughts and values,
clearly and unequivocally.
McGovern had slipped in my estimation. I still feel a little upset when I
think of Thomas Eagleton. The fact
that McGovern dumped him as a running mate when it came out that Eagleton had
had electroshock therapy seemed to me like an unforgiveable act of disloyalty and
cowardice. Truth is, the Eagleton
debacle sat so wrong with me, that years later when Gary Hart tried a Presidential
run, I wouldn’t consider supporting him simply because he had been McGovern’s
campaign manager. Needless to say,
I was not feeling enthusiastic about McGovern in the fall of 1972. On top of his disloyalty to Eagleton,
in every campaign ad McGovern sounded like he was apologizing for opposing the
war. And the closer we got to election
day the more apologetic he sounded.
I couldn’t understand why he didn’t just hammer the points adamantly –
the war is wrong; the draft is wrong; I will end the war, bring our troops
home, and offer amnesty to those who left the country to avoid the draft. I couldn’t see what was hard about
that. I was that young.
I’d never heard of absentee voting, but that was the rule in Stuart's family, not the exception. That way if
you died before election day, your vote would still count. Since I did not doubt the family wisdom, I
was a willing soldier in their army.
When the general said, “Vote absentee,” I voted absentee. But when I cast my early ballot, I
voted my conscience and instead of voting for George McGovern I voted for the candidate
I thought would do the best job – Linda Jenness.
I didn’t tell Stuart.
I didn’t tell anybody that I had voted for the Socialist Workers’ Party
candidate. Didn’t seem necessary
for one thing. For another, it was
my business who I voted for.
On the weekend before election day, Stuart and I went home
to Roby and stayed over until Wednesday.
That seems odd now because Stuart was actually an excellent student and
never cut classes. Still that’s
what we did – we went to Roby for the election. As if it were Christmas or Thanksgiving. On that Tuesday we didn’t go to the courthouse to vote
because, of course, we had already voted, but when the polls closed we all –
again, father, mother, grandparents, children – went to the courthouse. We weren’t the only ones. The courthouse square was bustling with
cars, and inside people were busy doing the work of citizens. The industrious
and mature, like my Aunt Fi, were working, counting votes, posting the count on the big black
board above us in the lobby. The rest of us, like me, were just hanging out,
watching the numbers go up on the board.
That’s when things got tricky. The first number to go up and the only count that never
changed on the blackboard all night long was the tally on absentee votes. Turns
out eight people had voted absentee in Fisher County that year. When the votes were posted in big, neat
numbers so that the old folks wouldn’t have to squint, it was revealed that
seven of the absentee voters had voted for George McGovern. One had voted for Linda Jenness.
I hadn’t anticipated the blackboard and it didn’t occur to
me when I cast my ballot that so few people voted absentee.
Who? I heard
people ask around me. Linda
Who? I have an image of Stuart’s
father looking at the blackboard.
He knew, of course, as we all did, that all eight absentee votes had
been cast by his family. He’d distributed
the ballots himself. He also knew
that anyone with a lick of sense in the room would know that all the votes in
the absentee column were his family’s.
But he met the information on the blackboard with a poker face, and I
never saw him look at the numbers in that column again. The younger generation
of the family eyed each other and me cautiously. Trying to figure out which one
of us had violated the family code of honor. I sat there all night, with the good citizens of Fisher
County, looking quizzically at Linda Jenness’s name on the board as if I
wondered who she was, too. I avoided making eye contact with Aunt Fi who had remarkable analytical skills and didn't appreciate many of the choices I was making that year to start with.
I don’t remember hearing anyone explain who Linda Jenness was. I didn’t hear anyone say “You’re
kidding?” or “Socialist what? What party?” or even “I’ll be damned.” But as the evening wore on I realized that people were no
longer asking the question. That’s how gossip works in Roby. It’s what you don’t hear that you need
to worry about. The truth of
what people think or say about you lies behind a mask of civility and layers of
triangulation, and once public opinion starts building against you, you're up to your eyebrows before you know it. Good mothers in Fisher County teach
their children that lesson when they’re very young. I didn’t make a conscious decision to be a chickenshit that
night, but I didn’t step forward and save Stuart or anyone else in his family
from being undeservedly labeled a socialist. I’m sure it didn’t occur to me to worry about their
reputations. And to tell the truth
I wasn’t worried about any of our reputations as much as I was worried about
being discovered as the traitor in our voting block. I was so consumed by that
worry that I barely noticed that the opponent of any candidate I would support
– Richard Nixon – won the election.
Oddly, Stuart’s parents never mentioned Linda Jenness after
election night. In my presence at
least. I imagined they must’ve
puzzled over it in private. But I
was confident they had no idea which one of the younger generation was the
outlier. I wasn’t the only rebel
in the bunch by a long shot.
Sometime after the election, though, I had a conversation
with Stuart’s father that probably gave him some satisfaction. I told him in a moment when we were
oddly alone that I thought you should vote for the best candidate, the
candidate you believed would do the best job. I said party affiliation didn’t matter. Or if it did, it ran a distant second
to the importance of the individual.
That seemed like a no-brainer to me and I was shocked to discover that
Stuart’s father adamantly disagreed with me. He said that an individual doesn’t
have enough power to get anything done.
The individual has to work within a party to have any strength, and the
party is much more powerful than any one candidate. If you want to change something, if you want to make things
better, he advised me, work within the party. Shape the party.
Make it see the issue you care about. Get the party to put its weight
behind platforms and initiatives that reflect your beliefs. The candidate comes later. It’s hard to remember the specifics of
things that long ago especially since I was probably high and trying to hide
it, but I remember my imposing father-in-law giving me a piercing look and
saying something along the lines of
“You think everyone deserves a fair shot.” He had an expression on his face that suggested he was old
and wise and would be amused at how young and naïve I was if it weren’t so
tragic. A look that made me suspect
he knew I was voting for socialists.
As intimidating as he was, his arrogance made me mad and I came back
with a defiant, “Yes, I do.” He
said, “I do, too. That’s why I’m a
Democrat.”
Yesterday I heard a report on the radio about why young
people don’t vote. In
interviews, young non-voters said that they weren’t interested in the election,
that they don’t know enough, that the candidates are all the same, that their
vote doesn’t matter. I felt sad
listening to them and wished that I could give them a fraction of my own
abundant emotion about the election.
To this day there is something about the Presidential election that
inspires awe in me. The significance of what we all participate in – Republicans,
Democrats, Libertarians, and Socialists alike – seems sacred and wonderful to
me. I always feel
tears welling up when I vote. It’s almost like having a hormone imbalance. Four years ago around this time of year, as the
likelihood of a miracle – that in my lifetime we could move from George
Wallace as a possible candidate to Barack Obama as President -- loomed larger everyday,
I began to feel like I was going to burst into tears all the time.
I look back on my first Presidential election and I think
about how naïve we were. And how
that blinded us to things. For instance,
how is it that we bought defoliants hook, line, and sinker two years after the
first Earth Day, a decade after Rachel Carson published Silent Spring? And
kept buying them after we found out about Agent Orange? I think about the advice Benjamin
Braddock got in The Graduate:
“Plastics.” We were savvy enough
to know how clever that joke was, smart enough to see where we were
headed. But not smart enough to
take another route. Maybe we were
lazy. Or high. Maybe none of us – even the hardworking
and sober – could handle the complexity of everything. But today I find myself being nostalgic
and wishing farmers would have kept stripping cotton in open-air strippers
after the first freeze. I realize that it's easy for me to wish that since I don't plant or plow or harvest anything. But I can't help noticing that some progress has hurt more than it's helped. I also wish I could take every young person who doesn’t
vote and sit them down in the old county courthouse in Roby, Texas in 1972 to
watch citizens of all stripes tally votes on a blackboard till way past
bedtime. Till all the votes were
counted. It’s hard to live
through that and think it doesn’t matter.
It’s all about politics. The semi-trucks on the highway, the cotton field behind the
house, the Farmer’s Union meeting, racism, shock treatments, stripping cotton, skipping class. All politics. That’s why it’s a serious business. That’s why little things -- like showing
up at the precinct convention or paying attention to the conversation at the
Farmers’ Union meeting or voting -- matter. That's probably the most important thing I learned in 1972. I imagine George McGovern and Thomas Eagleton and Linda Jenness all three would back me up on that.
“. . . go forth in love and peace — be
kind to dogs — and vote Democratic"
Senator Thomas Eagleton’s dying wish
