"Can men of privilege, who do not feel the impact of policies on forests, children or the ability to breast-feed their children.

Tuesday, November 07, 2000

"Can men of privilege, who do not feel the impact of policies on forests, children or the ability to breast-feed their children… actually have the compassion to make public policy that reflects the interests of others?" – Winona LaDuke

Growing up I never knew who my parents were voting for. It finally became a bit more evident in my father’s later years when he used to write scathing letters to certain congressmen. He seemed to open up a little more after my mother died and he started spending more time on the phone with friends, especially his Bohemian friends.

I came back to Austin when my mother died in 1980 to be with him as he was getting on in age and to help him adjust to his loss.

I was also with him when my sister died at 50 a few years later, after I had married and started a family of my own. We cried together then.

He used his "Whatcha doing that for?" look when I first ran for the school board saying, "You don’t want to be in anything political," with his rather firm conviction.

Then, before long, he would sit down with pen in hand giving hell to one political figure or another.

Fortunately his penmanship was next to impossible to read. Unless you had years of practice deciphering his penmanship, as I did reading his letters in the service and living away, you had no idea what he was saying most of the time.

His language got a little saltier, too, after Mother died and his appetite for speaking these words grew as well – most noticeably in phone conversations with friends or when his good friend Jim Dalager stopped by to visit and check in on him.

During the Hormel strike, I remember him saying that both sides were at fault; he was the only person I ever heard say that.

He was often laying on the couch reading the U.S. New and World Report late at night.

One of his last Christmases he was by our place for Christmas and I told him that my present was telling him I loved him, something I forgot growing up.

We stood in each other’s arms crying.

I won’t forget that.

And I won’t forget that my Dad gave me permission to cry and did just like my mother when we left Mallard Point on Prairie Lake to come home.

He was a people person and a dog lover. Every time Jack, our old cocker spaniel, got run over he would come home from work and start crying as he came in the back door.

He passed that on.

He cried, too, when it was time for me to leave each summer when I left to go back to wherever I was living at the time.

I remember him lying on the floor crying when I was suffering from the manic depression that I experienced before lithium.

I think he went with me the first time I voted at the Austin Township Hall before it was remodeled and turned into a tin shed.

Then it was for Lyndon Johnson or Barry Goldwater. In my mind I thought Goldwater was planning to nuke Vietnam.

I was still mourning JFK’s death and loss, the only president I made it a point to watch his news conferences – the only president I’ve seen with a sense of humor.

He also said, "You can’t fight another nation’s war."

Johnson, my choice then was saying, "I will never send my boys 8,000 miles to fight another nation’s war."

Two years later 500,000 others and I were in Vietnam.

My dad didn’t like that either. I had been drafted while teaching and he thought that the local draft board made exceptions in terms of who they drafted and who had influence.

By the time you read this you will still have time to vote and in this election perhaps more than any other your vote can make a difference – especially here locally – for that matter at the state and the national level.

It sounds like we could be making history with the presidential election whereas one candidate could win the popular vote and the other the electoral vote.

Or jeez, maybe they will tie like the Austin High School Homecoming queen candidates did and they will have to share the office.

That might be a good practice. Have the two parties, maybe three after this election, share the presidential and vice presidential office like the Senate and representatives share their respective houses – only make them share the same office, maybe then four years in office will be enough.

But, anyway you look at it, President Clinton will have to find a new place to hang his PJs.

Personally, I liked Bill. I liked him because he was the first president to use troops as a peace-keeping force and he made in-roads to Cuba.

Maybe the results of the ’60s are starting to show.

It’s about time.