COVID19: Early Vote

Jack and I voted Thursday afternoon.

We normally vote on election day at the Keltonburg Community Center and visit with Miss Linda and Miss Iva Dell, who always work the polls, for a few minutes. Miss Linda mentions the time she and Coach saw us eating with chopsticks at the Chinese restaurant ten years ago, and Miss Iva Dell asks how Sis' girls are doing and wants to see photos. Both women are retired elementary school teachers and worked with Dad at Smithville Elementary. Miss Iva Dell was my fourth grade home room teacher and graduated from high school with Uncle Billy, and Miss Linda's son, Rocky, and I went through school together and were in the same graduating class. Her husband, Coach, also taught at Smithville Elementary after a notorious career with the boys' basketball program at DeKalb County High School, including the years I attended. The roots run deep, and we always find plenty to talk about when we go vote. 

This time is different. With the dual threat of COVID19 and potential intimidation from the president's goons on election day, we took advantage of the opportunity to early vote at the courthouse. 

I thought voting was supposed to start at 1:00, so we arrived almost an hour early to find a group of people already waiting outside the locked doors of the courthouse basement. The line, as it were, was a dozen or so people scattered around the entrance area. The first person in line was a maskless man wearing a big, straw cowboy hat who sat in a lawn chair with an umbrella attached as a sunshade. He talked loudly to another maskless man who had also brought a chair from home and nodded as the man with the hat gave assurances of Trump's re-election and explained how "they're gonna target WalMart distribution centers and Amazon warehouses and burn'em all down when the results are announced. They hate white people that much."

The other man admitted that he sometimes watches a few minutes of CNN "just so see what they're up to."

I pilfered my giant handbag for the sketchbook and pencils I'd brought in case we needed to kill time, settling on a concrete bench to wait it out while Jack nervously took census of the other people waiting for voting to start. As I flipped to the drawing of a little block building I'd sketched-out the previous night and started adding trees behind it, Jack twitched and huffed yet another ragged sigh into his mask. He wanted to leave and didn't have to say it, and I admit I'd lost track of how many folks were crowding into the space nearby. 

I whispered some angry words about abandoning our spaces near the front of the line - we're so rarely early for things, and Jack whispered some angry words about dying of COVID19, then we stomped off to the car.

Forty minutes later, we put on our masks and joined the line. Groups and clusters of people, some wearing masks but most riding bareback, wrapped around the "Union Planters corner" to "across from Cantrell's Jewelry." 

A lot of visiting and laughing happened, and a toddler in orange pants gave hugs to the older women her mother knew. A man with a giant Trump flag and a tiny American flag mounted on a fishing pole shouted random admonishments from the sidewalk beyond the 100 ft. polling place boundary near the bank's drive-thru. The pod of folks immediately in front of us was a pair of elderly couples and a little man who was thankfully wearing a mask, because he talked a blue streak the whole time. He wasn't spinning conspiracy yarns. He talked about his garden and his cousin's garden, a truck he had fixed at Mark's Body Shop, all the tobacco his mama's people used to grow, taking a load of goats to the sale barn, every lawyer who's represented him in the last twenty years, going night fishing at Holmes Creek, and how he usually waits to vote on election day.

I eavesdropped, shifted myself away from folks, and shuffled forward almost to the courthouse doors. The check-in table was within sight. The closer we got, though, the more the couple behind us and the people in line behind them pressed toward us, and our progress stalled. Suddenly, one of the election officials appeared in the doorway and instructed everyone to spread out. She waved toward the "stand here" stickers placed at safe intervals on the interior floor and then asked us all to move aside, explaining that a voter had passed out and was unresponsive. She moved up and down the line to see if anyone knew the woman, but no one spoke up. The ambulance arrived, and the crew quickly packed up their patient and headed to the hospital with her. 

A half hour later, votes cast, we headed home. The lingering irritation I had about abandoning our place near the head of the line was misplaced because that situation was less safe than standing in line, and after all, we've waited four years for this, what's an extra hour and a half? 

Here's the guy with the flags. We know his name, because the former chairperson of the local Republican party had to remind him where he was supposed to stand.