Loose Leaf Notes

As soon as I reached the four-way intersection to make the turn to the Floyd County High School where I vote, I could tell it wasn’t an ordinary day. There were cars coming from two other directions with blinkers flashing, signaling that we were all converging to the same destination. When I took the turn that led to the school the first thing I noticed saw the Obama/Biden and McCain/Palin signs that lined either side of the road.
It was 10:30 in the morning and the voting line stretched from the donut and coffee station in the school corridor, along a row of lockers, and into the cafeteria where four voting booths housing touch screen computers stood. The atmosphere was orderly and friendly. People were greeting their neighbors and chatting about the weather and the price of gas. One man offered to find a chair for an elderly woman.
When it was my turn to vote, an election officer gave me the drill. I mentioned to her that I had recently read that Virginia was one of only 12 states in the country that doesn’t have a paper trail. She said they were working to change that. No one was voting at booth #4. It was being prepared to be carried outside to accommodate a voter who was physically unable to come into the building, another volunteer told me. Two young girls, acting as election pages awarded me with my I VOTED sticker. It took a total of no more than 15 minutes to check Obama/Biden, Warner, and Boucher.
Seems like everyone in Floyd votes and then heads over to the Angels in the Attic Thrift Shop, maybe because Tuesday is only one of three days that it’s open. I ran into friends there, and at The Harvest Moon Food Store and the Food Lion, who reported their voting experiences. One friend who wore an Obama button (a certain amount of feet from the voting venue entrance) while passing out sample ballots at a different voting location was the recipient of some ugly comments. Everyone else had upbeat stories to relate. At the Café Del Sol, where I was hanging up flyers for the November 15th Spoken Word, I ran into a van contingency from the Woodsong community who were in town to vote.
A man who I struck up a conversation with at the thrift shop told me that he once voted for Mickey Mouse and wondered why his vote wasn’t included in the newspaper with others when election results were reported. “Well, if a few people voted for Mickey Mouse, now that would be a story,” I said. “One vote for Mickey, it’s just a joke that barely registers.”
Update: Virginia went blue and Barack Obama won the Presidency! McCain just gave a class act concession speech and I’m waiting to hear Obama next while trying to absorb the reality of what just happened. The photo shown here was taken at 7:30 at El Charro Restaurant where some of us in Floyd gathered to watch the election results. It shows the first few of many states Obama won in.