Please Take Note of My Non-Vote

I opened and closed the ebony curtain to the phone-booth sized private realm and turned the little black switch to the left for Adlai Stevenson in 1956: my first ballot, cast in the basement of my elementary school on Summit Avenue. Alas, my candidate lost the election to General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Twice, in fact. I liked Adlai for his grace in disappointment, his fine diction, his solitary, almost lonely demeanor.

By the time that youthful Bostonian John F. Kennedy ran in the race to the White House, I was already teaching, and also writing copy for an advertising agency in downtown Providence. I had to produce editorials praising the chic of Madam Jackie with her pillbox hats and reasonable low-heel pumps. By then, we walked not uphill to grammar school but downhill to the Armory of Mounted Commands, from whence parades of veterans on horseback used to march past our house on Armistice Day celebrations or Memorial Day events.

That wasn’t so bad. A short stroll, a brief wait, the familiar vague perfume of hay. I, even in time, adjusted to the change from just around the corner of my boyhood dwelling to the fire station on Rochambeau Avenue, the northeast border of the Summit neighborhood. At least they boasted glass cases of memorabilia about the elegant crimson glitter of the proud traditions of engines, once horse-drawn and then very fancy carriages fit for the regal presidencies of our first, earliest, heads of state. I could make my choices – often eccentric, never pre-determined by party loyalties or simple inertia, sometimes sympathy votes for the underdog. Mostly, I like to preserve the environment as best I can, to safeguard the civil rights of the trees, birds and beasts so dear to childhood, but politically a rare issue. Hence, my support for Al Gore.

But this year, 2012, I simply could not find anywhere to do my civic duty! I drove past the church on Hope at Savoy. Nobody there. I tried the Jewish Community Center. Nope. Ah, my gas station ally suggests, “Try Nathan Bishop.” I breathed a sigh of relief. I had been class president in 1948, and had interviewed President Harry Truman that year, for the “Bishop Bugle,” of which I was serving a term semester as co-editor.

The stately building has been, of course, fabulously refurbished, and I didn’t mind, at first, waiting an hour in the long line. Until I realized I would miss my class. I left, not quite in a huff, and asked what might prove a better time to avoid the crush. “Try just before noon,” suggested a volunteer on the grand steps at the entrance.

I did so, and put in another full hour and more, making small talk with moms with newborn babes, elders with walkers and former classmates from the old junior high days in the once familiar corridor. I reached the inner sanctum, only to be informed that my name and address were not inscribed in the book of life. “Your district has been reassigned. You have to go to another place!”

A fellow recognized me from a jury duty session we had shared at the courthouse, and he was working behind the counter. I couldn’t be rude to him, but I was plenty sore. Quietly, to myself, but steaming inwardly, I vowed never to vote again! I knew I didn’t mean it, but I felt it at the moment.

I ranted and raved, to myself, driving back to my desk and my appointments, why is it so hard to get through election day? Never was before, in my experience, through the LBJ Vietnam era, beyond the Nixon epoch, Carters in denim, the Reagans with their Hollywood glamour, the Clinton scandals and the Bush decade before the slogan “change” with its false promise and its cheerful and whimsical logo designed by my stu- dent, Shepard Fairey.

But never, until the present moment, have I found it a burden to take part in the procession. This year was a catastrophe at the core and center of the democratic procedure. It is supposed to be a pleasure and a privilege to step up and join your fellow Americans in judgment and responsibility. We like to think we teach the rest of the nations of the human world how to do it right, free and easy. It didn’t work, for me, this time round. How about you?