Growing up in rural southwest Kansas had its advantages. Life seemed pretty simple, especially in
retrospect; we had everything we needed, if not all we wanted; the weather was
mostly friendly, if you discount the occasional roiling green tornado-breeding
skies and the raging blizzards; the crime rate was virtually nil, if it weren’t
for people like Smith and Hickock and those awful Clutter murders that brought
Truman Capote to town …. and the even more horrendous murder, for those of us
who knew them, of a beloved and respected local couple. After shooting them, the killer – who was
never actually caught -- burned their farmhouse down on top of them. Those things simply didn’t happen in our
world.
I’m pretty sure that’s when we started locking our
doors. Until then, we’d slept every night
with the house wide open, and our whole family would take off for a week in
Colorado without locking up and never give the security of our house and
belongings a single thought. In the
unlikely event that anything went awry, our grandparents next door or the
neighbors down the road would take notice and handle it for us.
Loss of innocence comes to us in ways big and small. Knowledge seeps uninvited into our lives while
we’re busy being kids, doing kid things, thinking kid thoughts. One day you’re making mud pies in the sun,
the next you’re eighteen years old and getting ready to vote for the first
time.
I distinctly remember my first experience casting my vote
for President of the United States. I
had just turned eighteen and was sensing the gravity of impending adulthood. Lyndon B. Johnson had signed into law the
Twenty-Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which, among other
things, lowered the voting age from 21 to 18, mostly out of consideration for
all those young men and women who were old enough to fight and die in Viet Nam,
but not old enough to vote. I could tell
you that, but it would seriously date me, so I’ve decided not to.
I dressed up as if I were heading for church, drove to a
little country school a few miles from the farm --- closed years earlier as a
place of learning but pressed into service as a community center, polling station,
and all-purpose meeting place --- and gravely marked my ballot.
I recall thinking that I really didn’t have much information
to base my decision on, other than what I’d picked up from my parents’
conversations and what little was available on our two rural TV channels. But vote I did, and I’ve continued to do so
in every national election since. It’s
what you do if you were raised right.
But there’s more to it than that.
With today’s limitless access to information there’s no
longer a valid excuse for, first and foremost, not voting at all, but specifically
for not knowing why we vote yes on this, no on that, for this person, against
that person. There’s no justification
for not making an informed, educated decision, one based in fact rather than
emotion. There’s no reason not to be
responsible for doing our own research, asking questions, and trying our
darndest to be well informed.
I find it empowering to vote as if my vote will be the
deciding factor. In that booth I’m
important. I count. The tools have changed, but the
responsibility is the same as the first time I exercised my constitutional obligation
to help shape the nation.
In that more innocent time, we listened to our news anchors
and felt we could trust them to tell us the truth. Now … and perhaps then … it’s necessary to
follow the money. Who paid for the
information that colors our thinking?
If we fail in our mandate to seek the truth and act on it,
we might as well go back to making mud pies in the sun.
