Behind the Curtain

​When I was a kid they actually took the time to teach civics. I doubt they do that anymore and if they do it is probably unrecognizable to the civics lessons I was taught. We were taught the fundamentals of government and the citizen’s role in the functioning of that government. Free elections and a person’s right to vote were emphasized as being everyone’s responsibility. 

As in most places in the USA, schools are used as polling places so just before Election Day the lobbies and hallways would fill with the machines used in the voting. Back then in my little corner of the Eastern United States, they were standalone booths. You stepped in and pulled a giant lever to one side causing the curtain behind you to swoop shut and the small flip switches that actually record your vote to all flip upright like a giant circuit breaker panel in front of you. These switches were how you voted. You went along the switches flipping the one next to your selection down. At the end when you moved the giant lever back to its original positon, the curtain would open, the small switches would all flip down and your vote would be recorded. The switches all flipped down so that when the curtain opened, people couldn’t tell how you voted. Genius!

You learned at a very early age that voting was for adults only, voting was secret and sacred, and hence you could not go into the voting booth with your Mom/Dad or whomever. You were a kid and wanted to know what was going on behind that bloody curtain, but rules actually meant something and were enforced. So because they still taught civics and voting was held in high esteem and not thought a bother, there was a certain point in Elementary school that you were brought to the lobby where the machines were and actually got to see what went on behind the curtain! FUN! Levers and switches and curtains! What’s not to love?

The voting booths always reminded me of those photo booths at arcades; the ones that printed four pictures of you on a strip of photo paper. In fact the only thing missing from that voting experience was a huge flash of light at the end and a picture of you having voted to record the event like a game show.

When I was an adult and had moved to Hawaii I was surprised at the whole laid back air of a Hawaiian polling station. Really I shouldn’t have been. One of the things I loved about the place was that “hang loose” vibe. But here there were booths with no levers, just a small shelf for you and your ballot and hole punch. There was a curtain that you had to pull closed yourself and barely went halfway down from the top and often had a festive printed pattern. The curtains on the voting booths of my youth were uniformly heavy, dark green/grey and most definitely opaque. Most interesting of all to me was you could bring anyone into the booth with you. I said it was laid back.

Every Election Day I am reminded of my libertarian minded father. He hated having to register to vote and be assigned a polling station and then showing ID once you got there. He always felt it was a little too “show me your papers”. And, he reasoned, that if his ballot was secret why did they need to actually record that he voted and in what booth he did so? As an American he felt it was his right to vote plain and simple which meant he should be able to go to any polling station at any time and vote, registered or not.

My father loved this country. LOVED IT. And to him this country was the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence and he didn’t need a bureaucrat reigning in his God given right to vote. So when he voted it was tense! Would he start arguing or just go with the flow? It really was like a game show! If only there were cameras.

There’s No Place Like It

A friend of mine was telling me about her excitement going back to the “old neighborhood” to relive the good old days. As is usual in these situations, “home” was nothing like she remembered.

One of the few times I have been back “home”, the house that my father built shortly after my parents were married came on the market. Being the youngest I only lived there until the summer between 3rd & 4^th  grade. Of the many houses we lived in since, it is still the one in my memories as “home”. Anyway the house came on the market and with my sister’s Real Estate license we got the keys and went for a visit. Besides being 10 times smaller than I remember it, it brought back so many memories…ones that are so vivid even as I type.

The house was vacant when we saw it which just ramped up the eerie tone of the visit. It was like walking into the house the afternoon of the day we moved out. Other than cleaning up I sincerely doubt the subsequent owners did anything to change the interiors. All the fixtures, colors, wallpapers were the same. A testament to my Dad’s good work.

All of the windows in the dining room and “play room” had hardwood window sills and I could not believe my eyes when I saw the teeth marks in them. Those were mine! An unfortunate relic of the past when I was tall enough to peer out of the windows but my mouth was just the same height of the sills. Based on the enjoyable sensation I got from chewing on the wood of a pencil, the sills didn’t stand a chance. Why they hadn’t been sanded out or something I do not know. Heck I think the dent I made in the hall closet door with my tricycle (!) was still there!

But the rooms were smaller then I remembered. The towering staircase to the 2^nd floor was ¼ the size of the one in my memory. Even the vast yard which to me was my own Central Park was a run of the mill suburban yard. The evergreens that my mother planted and spent summers caring for were gone. As were her pampered Rhododendrans.

The tree I crashed my sled into was gone and the sand pile where many hours were spent digging to China, was now green lawn. None of that dimmed my affection for the place.

This is the street where I learned to ride a bike; my sisters old pink “girl’s bike” Schwinn with training wheels. It is also where I fell over onto and squished the neighbor kid one of the first times the training wheels came off.

At the end of this same street, grew wild blackberries. On hot July days if my grandmother was visiting, she would take me down there to do some picking. I’d usually have an old washed out ricotta cheese container to hold the bounty. They didn’t have Tupperware back then. Most would make it into the container, but I had my fair share of the hot from the sun, sweet berries right there. When we’d get home they’d be chilled til later when they were served up with a spoonful or two of sugar sprinkled all over them.

Even though the saying is really true that you “can’t go home again”, I often muse about acquiring that place and maybe even retiring there. My sleepy, somewhat rural hometown of my youth is that way no longer. It is a thriving, BUSY, happening place. But that house will always be a bastion of my memories, a museum of my youth. I wouldn’t mind being curator for a while.