Duty and honor — the vote
Don Coldsmith
Monday, November 6, 2006
IT APPEARS that this election might be a very complicated one. There is a lot of controversy and a great deal of misunderstanding. And, I’m afraid, distorted information on the part of some political factions. We can figure it out, if we’re really interested, to look at who is willing to bend the law in the name of their religion. A “Christian nation” of course, is forbidden by the Constitution. We are pledged to allow freedom of anyone, no matter what their religion, to “worship as we please.”
There may be some who subscribe to the idea “What’s the use? My one vote won’t make any difference.” The best answer to that is, if you don’t vote, you lose the right to complain. But if we don’t vote, we leave it up to people we don’t like to make the decisions. Does that make any sense? I have seldom, if ever, voted a straight party line. If the best man (or woman) for the job is not a member of the party I usually support, I’ll cross over.
But, enough philosophy — At election time, I always find myself thinking about our honeymoon.
WHAT? Yes, it’s true. Our anniversary doesn’t always fall on election day. We weren’t married on election day, either, but two days before. The anniversary is linked to the DATE, the election to the first TUESDAY in November, which is variable. This is pretty handy in remembering the occasion, because if an election is coming up, so is our wedding anniversary, and we recall our first one together.
We had been good friends for years. That’s always a good start. Our major complications in choosing a date for the event was how to assemble our assorted families and friends from several states at the same time. The ceremony would occur in Baldwin City, where my parents had met, attended Baker University and were married at the home of my mother’s parents a generation ago. My dad was a Methodist minister, semi-retired. He would tie the knot. The rest of both families were scattered over three or four states, and we tried to assemble all we could for the occasion. This time, we were going to get it right. I planned a honeymoon, in a resort area in the Lakes Country of eastern Oklahoma, HER state, and an area we both love. Picking a date was a bit harder because of the scattered relatives, but we worked it out.
Coming down to the wire, we realized that a major election was to occur while we were honeymooning. It was important enough to cause both of us to cast absentee ballots, well ahead of the event. Hers, in Overland Park, mine in Emporia.
The ceremony went well and we took off for Oklahoma in my brand-new Chevrolet. The rowdy crowd of relatives were taking bets as to how far we’d travel before we stopped for the night. We traveled somewhat more than a hundred miles, actually. We’d have gone farther, except that the latch on the hood of the Chevy kept coming loose. The hood would fly open, obscuring all vision ahead. I’d have to ease over onto the shoulder of the road, get out and slam it shut again. Finally, I went through the car’s trunk and found some tools with which I could make an adjustment on the latch. Problem solved.
I had booked a cabin at a new resort on Tenkiller Lake, which proved not to have been a good idea. It was too new, nothing really up to par yet. We arrived on election day, and watched the election results on a black and white TV near the fireplace in the lodge building. (No fire, just a fireplace.) We spent the next day driving around in the beautiful Oklahoma autumn, looking for a better place to stay.
We found it in Tahlequah, capital of the Cherokee Nation. Wonderful, folksy, interesting. At the time, I had no idea of writing at all. Much less that decades later, I would be writing historical material about American Indians, and that we would have Cherokee friends in Tahlequah. I guess this can be covered in an observation by an Indian friend — “The spirits have a sense of humor, you know.”
Fortunately, so does my bride of 46 years.
See you down the road.
Author and columnist Don Coldsmith lives in Emporia.