Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Day 9, Barbara: A Veteran's Day

Friends ask me what I’m working on right now, other than the sequel to The Paragraph Ranch that Kay and are writing during NaNoWriMo. It’s the story of my colorful and sometimes cantankerous father—and that of his three grown daughters as his caregivers when he could no longer see, or see to his own needs. For my posting in November—the month of his birth, and the month of voting and Veterans’ Day—here’s a passage that takes place in what would be Bill Brannon’s last year of life.

* * *
William J. Brannon, Fort Fisher AFB, 1956
We try to urge Dad to get out and go with us, to the beach, or a folk music singalong, or a visiting author’s reading. But he finds the effort of getting dressed to go out in public exhausting. “I’d only slow you down,” he says, and he’s right, though that’s a concession we’re willing to make—to change things up, lighten his spirits.
         “I tell you what,” I offer, as I finish stirring the spaghetti sauce for dinner, on the island stovetop that separates his kitchen from the dining table where he sits listening to a diatribe on FoxTalk Radio. “There’s a concert on campus next Friday night that I think you’d enjoy. The Air Force Band is performing, and I can get free tickets for all of us. Don’t you think that’s enough advance notice for a shower and shave?”
         “Well, maybe . . . aren’t there a lot of stairs to navigate?” He turns the radio down a notch.
         “There’s an easy ramp for handicapped access.”
         “Parking might be a problem.”
         I cut him off. “We’ll be able to get you right up front in the faculty lot. And you’ll have plenty of help. What do you say?” I fill the pan at the sink and put it on to heat for the noodles while I wait for his answer.
         “All right,” he replies with as much enthusiasm as a petulant child, before turning up the volume again and rejoindering with Hannity and Colmes.
         The water comes to a boil, and I crack the package of noodles into it.
         “What a bunch of nonsense,” Dad carps to no one in particular. The topic of the radio show seems to be the president’s sinking approval ratings and the upcoming midterm elections. “Come on, we’re the most powerful nation on earth and we can’t seem to take down one crazy religious fanatic hiding in a cave in the desert? You can’t claim that Bush has done a damn thing to win this ‘war on terror.’ Just keeps sending more troops to Iraq, getting more body bags back. And now he’s letting those commie clowns in North Korea walk all over him.”
         I tolerate the rant for about another half a minute. And then I break. “Dad—” I light into him, marching over to shut off the squawk box, “—not that I necessarily disagree. But what good does it do to sit here day after day arguing with the radio?”
         He shuts up for a second and looks at me through those thick lenses that magnify his wide expression. All is quiet except the bubbling of the pot on the stove.
         “What I mean is, how can you just let a fine mind go to waste, doing nothing with your energy and your intellect?”
         I’ve built up quite a head of steam, and he lets me continue. “Look. All my life you have spouted off ideas about this and theories about that. Criticizing the way our government is run, armchair-quarterbacking how it could’ve been done better. Kibbitzing from the sidelines. But I have never seen you serve on a jury. Never seen you so much as volunteer for the P.T.A. Never even seen you vote.” I punch my finger on the table in front of him for emphasis.
         Silence again for a beat. And then he murmurs, “I’m not registered.”
         “What?” I ask, genuinely not sure what he’s said.
         “I’ve never registered to vote. Ever.”
         I’m astonished, really . . . but I shouldn’t be. If I think back about it, my excitement at age eighteen, coming in the door after casting my first vote in a presidential election, for our fellow Georgian Jimmy Carter—he’d never said a word about going to the polls himself. I just assumed. Fathers served in the armed forces, they married and had a family, they bought a car and a house, they voted. All essential elements of the American Dream.
         I let my anger deflate.
         “Take me to register,” he says in a measured tone. “Drive me down to wherever you go, and I’ll fill out whatever I need to do. And I’ll vote.”

* * *
         It is an arduous undertaking—first, locating a birth certificate among Mom’s old papers, then securing a new Social Security card when Dad admits his original had been lost in the surf along with the rest of his wallet years ago and his driver’s license is long expired; then getting him into the car and out again at the Board of Elections. But he emerges at the end of the day a registered North Carolina voter, just under the wire for the national election that will take place the week of his seventy-fourth birthday.
         We accompany Dad the following week to the Air Force Band concert, escorting him to a seat well forward where he can hear reasonably well and make out some of the shapes of the performers. Beverly sits on one side and I on the other, happy to see his obvious enjoyment as the evening opens with “The Star-Spangled Banner.” We all rise and sing, hands over hearts.
         There comes another patriotic favorite midway through the program. The conductor announces the Armed Forces Medley, a stirring arrangement of each service anthem, during which veterans from each branch are invited to stand and be honored. But as the music segues into Off we go, into the wild blue yonder, Bill Brannon keeps his seat.
         I lean over to him. “Are you having trouble getting up?” I whisper in his ear. “I’ll help.”
         He stage-whispers back, “But . . . I’m not a vet—I didn’t serve in combat.”
         I look over at Bev and signal for her to grab an arm. We haul him to his feet and stand alongside him, as applause for all airmen present thunders through the auditorium. We will draw him out of his self-containment, his churlish and perverse isolation, if it takes every one of us to do it.

* * *
         On November 7, 2006, William Joseph Brannon, ceaseless political spectator, from a walker in the company of his two eldest daughters, punched a ballot for the first time in his life. He did not reveal his choices to us. It didn’t matter: he’d participated in the process. And when he held forth in debate ever afterward—from that day to his last—it was not with that damned radio, but with one of us.

* * *

Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Day 8, Kay: Time to Vote

How many of you remember the first time you ever voted?

We all do. The likelihood is that if you’re reading this blog you’re a voter.

My first time to vote was in 1978. My parents had never voted. They were passionate about politics and felt rescued from the ravages of the Depression by FDR, but had never voted. They had a variety of reasons not to vote, but I think they simply felt intimidated by the process.

When they were in their sixties and I was in my twenties, I helped them to register to vote, and I think they took some pride in being regular voters after that. The last vote my mother cast was in 2008 when the county clerk brought the ballot to the car, and she voted for Hillary Clinton in the primary.

But thirty years earlier I had steered my ’72 Vega across John Ben Shepperd Parkway in Odessa and entered the gymnasium of an all but empty elementary school. It had taken quite a bit of effort to register as a college student to be able to vote in a town that wasn’t my own, but I was committed.

With great pride I plunged into the prospect and cast my ballot for John Hill for governor, and the electronic ballot punched William P. Clements for governor. I could not convince the poll worker that my ballot had been cast wrong. She assured me it was right. Was it? I’ll never know. But my guy didn’t win.

On today’s Election Day I will have to make myself vote. Frankly, I’ve lost my stomach for it. Money, zealots, and cynics have hijacked a process I used to respect. One party controls Texas, and other choices and voices seldom have a chance.

However, the only way Texas will ever have two viable parties is for everyone to vote. The only path for the process to be credible is for everyone to vote. One of the reasons why extremists who talk about secession with a straight face have a platform is that off-year elections have such abysmal turnout.

Take back Texas. Vote.