Tuesday

Really enjoyed the evening over in DeKalb. No, really. My pal Pete and I picked up a couple of common clients at the Dixon exit, and eventually found our way to the NIU field house. The facility was an almost new, very modern arena that would seat around 9,500 for basketball. There may have been 1,500 or so at the game. Aguie played poorly for the first 15 minutes (down by 26 at one point) and then actually outscored NIU over the rest of the game, losing by 15 or so.

The biggest downside for me was the return time of 11:45 PM which is way past my bedtime.

Any of our English scholars out there want to take a stab at the proper use distinction between past and passed? I know that a dead guy passed away. And that a crude oaf with indigestion issues passed gas. And that that last sentence was expressed in past tense. But what's the rule?

Election Day. Which I will use to reminisce on a little Family History.

Daddy loved his job as a Supervisor. I think he loved meeting and greeting people. I'm not so sure that he loved politics. Certainly, the late elections took a toll on him and Mother as the media became more obsessed with possible "dirt" that they could throw at the candidates. I have theorized that the local paper, The Ottumwa Courier, had employees in the mid-70's who had learned their trade in the Watergate era, which meant that they took it as their professional responsibility to vet anyone in the public domain.

AM may be able to fill in some of the details from the first elections in the mid 50's. I know that my Grandpa H was a Wapello County Supervisor at some time. I suppose that that is where Daddy got the bug. In any event, I believe that Daddy ran, and lost, in his first attempt at public office. Then, again I think, in the period before the next election, he was appointed to fill an unexpired term of a Supervisor who either died or resigned. He then ran for election at the end of that term, was elected, and remained on the Board over the course of another 5-6 elections.

He was a moderate Democrat in what was at the time one of the few Democratic counties in the state. Wapello County was a "union" county with a big John Deere plant on the Southside of town, and a major John Morrell meat packing plant on the Northeast side. The unions were pretty strong and Daddy was able to get their vote. As a farmer, he also must have faired well at the polls in the rural areas of the county.

He was a Catholic, and at the time, there was a recognized anti-Catholic element in elections. Obviously, the election of John Kennedy as President diffused a lot of that prejudice. But I remember Mother and Daddy always talking cautiously of their concern about a possible religious backlash. To my knowledge, their fears on this matter never became reality.

"Running" for office meant a lot of meetings at night and "politicking" during the day. He always had "chatskey" (my term) items for give-aways. Combs, match-books, pens. I would guess that every telephone pole in Wapello County had one of his 18" x 24" picture-posters tacked to it at one time or another in the course of his time in office. On Election Day, I was always positioned just outside one of the voting sites, handing out his small picture-cards to each person headed in to vote. (That would most-assuredly be against the law today.)

Mother was in charge of "absentee" ballots. I think she worked the nursing homes, hospitals, and shut-ins for pre-Election Day votes. She had a Notary seal, and I'm certain that it was for the purpose of absentee ballots. In Daddy's last campaign in the late 70's, The Courier ran a story on the Monday before the election that there may have been some "irregularities" on Daddy's absentee ballot program. Mother and Daddy were devastated. Obviously, he won the election the next day. And the paper later printed some sort of retraction/clarification.

I had a heavy-equipment salesman from Cedar Rapids (whom I interviewed for an MBA project at Iowa in the mid-70's) tell me that Daddy was the best he had seen in a Board of Supervisor's office. He said that Daddy had a way about himself at controlling a meeting and getting people to feel like he was listening to them.

In the pre-Watergate era, Daddy would receive various Christmas gifts from salesmen that called on the county for contracts of goods and/or services. A ham here. A fifth of whiskey there. Never a lot. But it was the practice of business back then. After the press got turned on to Watergate-like shenanigans, Daddy rarely kept any of these gifts. (Since Daddy didn't drink, or drink much, that whiskey usually found it's way down the throat of a sick calf in need of something to warm it's innards! True story!)

One by-product of his position as an elected official was that he was eligible to travel, with expense account, to the annual national convention of county officers. I can't remember when the first trip was, but he and Mother made numerous trips over the years to this annual gathering. Always by car. New Orleans. Las Vegas. Miami. I don't know if their grown kids living in California factored into these trips or not, but by the mid-60's it became routine for them to jump in the car for a 10 day or two week journey. Which meant I was home on the farm milking cows and bailing hay.

I gotta go run with 2. Maybe I'll get back to this topic another time. For those readers expecting creative commentary on more interesting and timely issues, come back another day.

Have a great evening.

BCOT