A patriot is reborn and other election day tales

I weathered a ten-block round-trip stroll down an icy sidewalk to my precinct polling station in order to perform my patriotic duty this evening. It was a mite bit less patriotic than the last time I voted at a polling station back in 1998, taking the last bus out of Eugene to Leaburg, voting at the community center, and trudging five star-spangled miles upriver through the thick fall rain to my house in Vida, but light-years more patriotic than the government-forced election regime I had to suffer through for the next four cycles - a thrall to the un-American, and quite frankly, vaguely Communist, Oregon Vote by Mail system. In an Ecstasy-and-red-wine fuzzed post-coital embrace, ms. wobs and I would cackle seditiously, invoke various Pagan deities, and conspire to mark our ballots in such a manner as to most righteously smash freedom. A veritable "Poke and Vote" it was. Medical marijuana? Why only medical? Tax cut? Why not? Physician-assisted suicide? Don't give up yet, we're legalizing weed!

I don't do that anymore. Nope, tonight I was an upstanding citizen treading the red, white, and blue path to liberty with my fellow citizens, and it felt good - far better than those libertine voodoo incantations to elect Ralph Nader.

Bonus election day tale: In 1996, a friend of mine and I spent the better part of the late afternoon getting drunk on a half-rack of Rainier pounders, financed mostly through the return of 144 beer bottles (the maximum that the Safeway would take - we had plenty more). In the early evening we went through the rain to our polling place, where we tramped in wearing dripping wet rain suits and smelling of cheap beer. We weren't obnoxious, but we were having fun, and we started chatting up the amused people in line behind us. Someone sternly commented that we might have been enjoying ourselves too much, given the task at hand. My friend good-naturedly shot back, "And my vote counts just as much as yours!"

Bonus bonus!: Hey look! Results!