Monday, September 20, 2004
Perspectives: On the election trail with family and friends, circa 1955
From the Macon Telegraph
n the deep Missouri winter of 1955 my father announced that he was running for Congress, and my brother and I instantly became Exhibit A in the case he took to the voters. It was a complicated time for us.
Until then we had spent our seven and nine years mainly as private projects of our mother in her quiet, orderly world of feeding, clothing, and bed-tucking.
We saw our father mostly on weekends while he chain-smoked over stacks of yellow legal pads - writing copy for his advertising company, laboring over radio and television scripts, filling pages with numbers. He was a restless, dream-driven man.
Our small world's population abruptly split in two: Donkeys (Us) and Elephants (Them).
Our sense of new importance to the family increased when our mother began to break long-honored household rules. We were allowed, even encouraged, to stay awake later on school nights so that we could come downstairs and be shown to large groups of people who gathered almost nightly at our house. We couldn't have slept anyway because they were so noisy.
We got our first look at some "Democrats" at these gatherings: they seemed to be mostly farmers of some sort. I heard Nana tell my mother that it was "dangerous for every hillbilly in the Ozarks to traipse through this house."
His "campaign trail" led through the southwestern Missouri Ozark Mountain foothills, through small towns named Neosho and Aurora and Nixa, past foaming streams and deep blue lakes. The winter landscape was dramatic, but we rarely looked because we were dazzled by the people on the bus.
The musicians were the best. They sat in the back where there was always a strong smell of alcohol, though no cans or bottles were ever visible. Any time we drifted back there, my mother soon bustled back and told us cheerfully to "leave these folks alone to work on their music." They never worked on their music in the bus. They played cards and told stories that made each other laugh very loudly.
Tommy Sosebee was our favorite. He was the soloist who began each whistle stop with a thrilling rendition of "In These Hills God Walks with Me." He walked with a pronounced limp, and in my memory he looks like Johnny Cash.
By summer a very young Brenda Lee joined them onstage, but she sat with her aunt in the boringly familial center section of the bus. Nana said that Brenda Lee would lose her voice by age 30 if she kept singing so loudly.
A deeper and more solemn excitement emanated from the dozens of men, women and children who came to our rallies. To my father these were not "hillbillies" but hill people who, like his parents, Sherman and Frankie Brown, lived hard lives on farms or in small towns.
In his tiny hometown of Humansville (a birthplace fit for a political myth if I ever heard one), my father had worked many a hard-scrabble job himself to help support the family during the Depression.
Nowadays, every time I see Barbara and Jenna Bush, Chelsea Clinton, Vanessa Kerry, and all the other young symbols of "family values," I wonder what a whole life of party politics and reflected fame is like. What combination of idealism and cynicism do they bring to the voting booth? And I have to admit that I can't help wondering, did their mothers (or fathers) let them hang out with Toby Keith and Willie Nelson?
Read the article
Macon Telegraph
n the deep Missouri winter of 1955 my father announced that he was running for Congress, and my brother and I instantly became Exhibit A in the case he took to the voters. It was a complicated time for us.
Until then we had spent our seven and nine years mainly as private projects of our mother in her quiet, orderly world of feeding, clothing, and bed-tucking.
We saw our father mostly on weekends while he chain-smoked over stacks of yellow legal pads - writing copy for his advertising company, laboring over radio and television scripts, filling pages with numbers. He was a restless, dream-driven man.
Our small world's population abruptly split in two: Donkeys (Us) and Elephants (Them).
Our sense of new importance to the family increased when our mother began to break long-honored household rules. We were allowed, even encouraged, to stay awake later on school nights so that we could come downstairs and be shown to large groups of people who gathered almost nightly at our house. We couldn't have slept anyway because they were so noisy.
We got our first look at some "Democrats" at these gatherings: they seemed to be mostly farmers of some sort. I heard Nana tell my mother that it was "dangerous for every hillbilly in the Ozarks to traipse through this house."
His "campaign trail" led through the southwestern Missouri Ozark Mountain foothills, through small towns named Neosho and Aurora and Nixa, past foaming streams and deep blue lakes. The winter landscape was dramatic, but we rarely looked because we were dazzled by the people on the bus.
The musicians were the best. They sat in the back where there was always a strong smell of alcohol, though no cans or bottles were ever visible. Any time we drifted back there, my mother soon bustled back and told us cheerfully to "leave these folks alone to work on their music." They never worked on their music in the bus. They played cards and told stories that made each other laugh very loudly.
Tommy Sosebee was our favorite. He was the soloist who began each whistle stop with a thrilling rendition of "In These Hills God Walks with Me." He walked with a pronounced limp, and in my memory he looks like Johnny Cash.
By summer a very young Brenda Lee joined them onstage, but she sat with her aunt in the boringly familial center section of the bus. Nana said that Brenda Lee would lose her voice by age 30 if she kept singing so loudly.
A deeper and more solemn excitement emanated from the dozens of men, women and children who came to our rallies. To my father these were not "hillbillies" but hill people who, like his parents, Sherman and Frankie Brown, lived hard lives on farms or in small towns.
In his tiny hometown of Humansville (a birthplace fit for a political myth if I ever heard one), my father had worked many a hard-scrabble job himself to help support the family during the Depression.
Nowadays, every time I see Barbara and Jenna Bush, Chelsea Clinton, Vanessa Kerry, and all the other young symbols of "family values," I wonder what a whole life of party politics and reflected fame is like. What combination of idealism and cynicism do they bring to the voting booth? And I have to admit that I can't help wondering, did their mothers (or fathers) let them hang out with Toby Keith and Willie Nelson?
Read the article
Macon Telegraph
# posted by Dave Sichak @ 3:29 PM 
