Pall Mall

It's election day in Tunnel-ville.  Same goes for Kickapoo Center.  If you're wondering, yes, there is a Tunnel-ville. It's nearby.  Mountain Man Johann explained the origins of the place in a journey across the tundra through the Kickapoo Reserve.  My faulty memory says it has to do with tunnels and an old railroad grade.  In Sedona, actually the Village of Oak Creek, a road sign announces a side road called Back O 'Beyond. Clever pioneers, yes they were.

Since I'll be going to the polling place today, I'll need to spruce up. I'll forgo my favorite khaki shirt with the frayed collar for a maroon L.L.Bean chamois shirt. I've got a few more days in these blue jeans.  I won't, however, have to turn them inside out like Jeannette Walls' grandmother did in Half Broke Horses.

No one's running for office in Kickapoo Center because no has lived there for 100 years.  In the Town of Kickapoo all of the town board is running unopposed. The former town chairman calls on our land line yesterday.  After nine rings, I decide to answer the phone. Telephone solicitors usually give up after eight.  I'm guessing  Jorge is trying to get in touch and is out of telephone minutes on his cell.

"Were you sleeping?" he asks.  "No," I reply. "I don't answer this phone because some one tries to sell me something when I do."

"I'm not selling," he says.  "I'm buying. I need your vote.Write me in tomorrow. They never applied for the grant to repair town roads. I got a grant three out of four times when I applied."

I'm sold..  Disgruntled because of the condition of our road after the town snow plow scrapes all the gravel and a swath a half mile wide with their front mounted plow and side swinging scraper.  I'm frazzled and worn from three hours  spent repairing huge divots, raking boulders off the lawn and replanting turf.  It's a dead end road, for cripes sake. Dawn, myself and the telephone company are the only travelers on this road the town crew figures should be wide enough for two 18 wheelers to pass simultaneously. ...And there are three more hours of road work left.

The best reason to vote is the election for State Supreme Court.  A Republican governor nominates David J. Prosser jr. to the Supreme Court in 1998.  His opponent is(according to my wife who heard an interview on NPR) an articulate speaker, Assistant Attorney General Joanne Kloppenberg.  The news media quickly fixed attention on Prosser after he loses the key support of a respected former governor, is quoted as labeling liberal Supreme Court Justice Shirley Abrahamson, "a total bitch", is endorsed by none other than Sarah Palin and  has turned a normally non-partisan, dull election into a proxy fight closely allied to Skippy Walker's anti-union bill.  We need another conservative Republican judge playing politics in office?

If you're wondering Pall Mall is an alley in London.  A game similar to croquet, knocking balls through iron hoops, originated there.