Election Day stories

Nancy Adams
Nov 6 · 4 min read

I am very happy to be sitting down, here at the kitchen table, coffee pot under close observation. Annie is outside after a rough night chasing her tail. «Is she schizophrenic,» I asked Merv as we listened in our bed regretting that crisp cotton just does not do the job that flannel sheets do. She finally settled down and of course Judge just settles, and we got warm, but a day of pie making and meetings and serving the spaghetti supper at the church built up an appreciation for a chair.

My lunch meeting was down in Mayville, the county seat. I took Dad’s old route, up Creek Road, down Farmington Hollow, up over the continental divide, down past the Cassadaga Lakes, through Stockton, into the Chautauqua Lake watershed, left at the courthouse, down the street with a hard right turn and into Webb’s Restaurant and Resort. Dad’s old route took him 30 minutes. I took 42 minutes at the speed limit.

The restaurant seated us by the fireplace and good soups were on the menu and the meeting went well I thought and no one mentioned Dad. They are young. Well, lots of them were from Jamestown and Jamestown never thought much of Dad. Maybe too many tea-totaling Lutherans, maybe growing up in a town that had everything you needed for a decent life…jobs…movie theaters…church…YMCA…hospital…Swedish clubs…bakery…department store…fishing…country club. Jamestown didn’t need us, kind of forgot about us like New York City forgets about Upstate. So, even though Webbs was the place Dad put the sequestered juries for their meals and nights, I got no stories about Dad.

The stories came later. I stood in line to vote. «Did you ever hear about when my Mother-in-law was called to jury duty in Mayville,» asked the poll worker. Her Mother-in-law was a force to be reckoned with, a strong woman with tall strong sons that played mean games of baseball. According to the story, Dad asked if there was anyone who considered being on the jury a hardship. Her Mother-in-law raised her hand. «Please come forward, Mrs. Bradigan,» Dad said, for she lived in the country around here. «I am too old,» Mrs. Bradigan said. «Well, how old are you?» asked my Dad. «A lady never reveals her age!» she responded, shocked, to my father. «You are excused,» said Dad.

At the dinner, Merv and I sat down at a table next to a no doubt successful candidate for town board. I had never talked with him, but he had been a cop, with the town, and then a sheriff, with the county, and sure enough he was old enough to have known Dad.

Your Dad came to a Town Board meeting once. I don’t know why he was there. He was a Judge by then. After the meeting we took him across the street to the bar. On the game board the highest scorer’s name for the Trivia game was listed. Your Dad did not think that person was qualified to be the highest scorer, and so began to play. Score after score. Sure enough, by the end of the evening it was Lee Towne Adams in the lead position.

There was something missing from this story. I knew Dad could not won at Trivia by himself. Oh, he could name major lake in every continent, the old capitals of every European principality, the ages of every English king when they died. He knew sines and cosines and the date, general, year of every Civil War battle. He knew the placement of the armies at Waterloo, the height of Kilimanjaro. He knew 10 ways of making cock-a-leakie soup. He could tell you feet to rods to pints to bushels. He knew to the quarter ounce the number of gallons to a pound of milk. But ask him to recognize a movie star not in a western, or a modern painter, or a pop singer, or the starting linebacker at Auburn University and he would curl his lip and sneer. Not worth knowing.

So I pressed. «By himself?» I asked. «Well,» responded the no doubt successful Board candidate, «We helped him out a little.»

I am here, this morning in Upstate, so Upstate that we are even Upstate to Jamestown, which might examine its own upstateness some day. I am here, savoring some good stories about juries and bars and neighbors, and of course, my cup of coffee, and happy fire and sleeping dog. And realizing that I have to leave for a meeting in 15 minutes. Time for breakfast. Morning. Have to go!

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