It's Veterans Day, and I'm picking through a pile of stuff that my mother-in-law dropped off last night. Here is the New Testament she bought for her husband of two months to carry in his breast pocket to protect his heart against gunfire. Here is the prayer book for soldiers and sailors. Here is a booklet addressed to the transportation corps in the European theater. Ah, the manual of transportation rules of the military railway service. The basic field manual, a page describing British Guiana, a booklet on Brazil titled "Homeward Bound".

"A barber shop, featuring a first-class haircut for 15 cents, is open during daylight hours, and a nickel will get you a super shoe shine to the rhythm of 'Tico Tico.' Only suckers pay more."

This young man returned home after three years' separation from his young wife. But he did come home.

Thanks to all those who have served our country. Thanks to the friends and families of those who have lost their lives in service to this country.

A special thanks to my gay brother Charles, who, of five boys, was the only one to serve in war. That was Vietnam. They didn't ask and he didn't tell.

Slow Modem

The election is over and my girl lost. So let's see, husband, job, crop, election. Not a cheery prospect.

Yesterday my post was at the Old Courthouse here in Vidalia. The poll workers were all women I knew well. Two of them were neighbors. Of course, in a town of 4500 I guess all of them were neighbors. William Yarbrough, one of the already defeated candidates for judge, was there poll-watching for a senatorial candidate. He should have won the judge's race.

It was pouring down rain when I arrived. I got wet and the hall was chilly. Nobody had told me that I needed to provide my own chair. Luckily, Kathleen had a folding chair in her trunk that she let me borrow. It was a hard chair. So I shifted and shivered for nearly ten hours, marking off incoming voters in my three-ring binder with a yellow highlighter when names were announced to the poll workers.

I hadn't realized just how social a process voting is in our town. "Hey, how are you? I haven't seen you lately.""Oh, I had a couple of mini-strokes and I've had sinus problems so I haven't been out much.""Well, you're looking good.""Oh, I don't feel too bad, it's just been a little hard.""Well, we're glad to see you today.""Thank goodness the rain let up.""Hasn't it been awful lately?" Yada, yada, yada.

Voters were remarkably well-prepared. We had a slate of 12 amendments to the state constitution and both the congressional races had large slates of candidates. Most people had studied the issues and brought written lists with them, so spent little time in the booths.

While touch screen voting machines are being introduced in Louisiana, our town will be using lever machines for years to come. Most people are happy with the lever machines and see little reason to change. They are familiar and easy. Parents bring their children with them and take them into the booths to show them how voting is done.

Anyone who is convinced that the south is insufferably racist wouldn't have found any evidence of it at our polling place yesterday. While that precinct is mainly white, poll workers were equally friendly and helpful to blacks who approached. Such problems as blacks had usually hinged on their confusion as to which precinct they should vote in. Those problems were resolved by calls to the registrar's office. Whatever their personal attitudes toward blacks might have been, all the workers were firm believers in every registered voter's right to vote.

After 4:30, I dropped my materials off with the campaign workers, came home, changed into sweats, picked up my husband and went to our polling place in a mainly black precinct. The black workers there were equally cheerful, friendly and helpful to me.

All aside, it's a magic thing to come home tired, sore, cold and hungry and have a little bird say, "Hey, Yanis!"

The election is tomorrow, so it's back to the telehones tonight. I am not particularly good with phones. I use them to keep in touch with my family across the country and make appointments. Thirty calls this evening is a dreaded task to me.

My job tomorrow is more suited to my temperament, if I can get over waking at about 5:30 am, absorbing enough coffee to get my neurons firing, voting at 6:30 or so and staying awake all day while I mark off voters.

We have an 80% chance of rain tomorrow, so turnout could be depressed, which bodes ill for my girl Madaline.

I wouldn't be surprised if voters don't turn up. We have been laboring under a heavy cloud this week that has dropped over 6 inches of rain, destroying local crops and casting a general pall over everyone's spirit.

In the old days, before I had Lucy and Lyman I would have gone to the public library and buried myself in bed with sleazy novels for the past two weeks. Or nineteenth century English novelists. Nothing like a Thomas Hardy to bring you into sync with such grim weather.

I need some soup. I don't dare make any because the new refrigerator won't be delivered until Wednesday and leftovers will just spoil - - like all the crap that is spoiling in there now. Besides, Lyman doesn't like my soup, which I consider his taste problem, not mine. He likes his mother's soup. Push it, Prince. I have myself heard his daddy try to teach him better than that.

You probably fall asleep too early, or you don't watch much television, so you wouldn't have seen the ad for the Elvis Presley furniture collection brought to you by Vaughn Bassett furnishings. Just in time for Christmas!

OK, who in the @$#%$^%&^*&( was Jack Welch sleeping with when my $1200 refrigerator was made. Big GE boy, it lasted all of five years.

Farm Outlook Turns Dreary

The Concordia Sentinel reports:

Any hope of a good farm year was dashed as over five inches of rain fell over the weekend in Concordia Parish.

County Agent Glen Daniels said Monday the heavy rainfall from Friday through Sunday would cause the soybeans to rot and the cotton to lose its grade.

[...]The October harvest was brought to a halt earlier in the month with hurricane weather that produced rain and wind. Until then, the harvest in the parish promised to be one of the best in many years[...]

So not only has my candidate lost her husband this week, but she has also lost 5,000 acres worth of soybeans.

Halloween III

This one is eerie.

I, like most people, have some extremely realistic and frightening dreams. One night I dreamed that I was asleep in a recliner. Not a likely thing. I don't do recliners. At any rate, I was sleeping in the chair, and after a moment, hands closed around my throat. I awoke and resisted with all my strength. The would-be strangler scooted and I woke from the dream.

Several months later I read in the Dallas Morning News of a woman who resisted a strangler who approached her while she was asleep in her recliner. That's strange stuff.

Halloween II

When we moved to a new neighborhood in 1968, our paperboy was a skinny kid named Russell Smith. He was in my sixth-grade class.

We became great buddies over the years, and he turned out gay, so my parents had no objections when we decided to share a two-bedroom, two-bath apartment at about the age of twenty.

Our bathrooms had shower curtains rather than doors. One evening I was taking a good hot shower before going out on the town. As far as I knew, I was alone in the apartment. I was busily soaping my hair when a hand reached in and touched my foot. Now, I have seen Psycho more than once. I bet you have, too.

Halloween

Like my daddy, Mr. Possum, I was raised without superstition. However, I was raised with five big brothers and a big sister, which was horror enough. Paul, the youngest of my brothers, was 11 years older than I and liked nothing better than to tease. He inked a devil's face on my favorite rubber doll. He tickled me until I peed my pants. He drew excellent cartoons of me in the bathtub with fart bubbles. He was and is incorrigible.

When he was fourteen or so he tired of being the puniest of the boys and sent for the Charles Atlas body-building program and followed it religiously. After a while, he could grasp the trunk of the apple tree in our front yard and hold himself parallel to the ground. He could do I don't know how many chin-ups on the bedroom doorframe.

One night, I was walking home from my playmate's house four doors down the street and heard an evil laugh. I looked around, frightened, and there was Paul, suspended by his toes from the redbud tree at the corner of our yard.

We didn't have any air-conditioning in our house until 1966. We kept cool with open windows and squirrel-cage fans.

I was, of course, always put to bed before the rest of the kids. From time to time, I would run screaming from the bedroom because someone was scratching on the windowscreen. Paul, certainly.

Of all his little evils, the kitchen door was the worst. Our kitchen door had a window. One black night, I looked up to see a face scrunched against the glass. There goes Janis bawling into Mother's skirt.

The house I live in now is on the edge of town, near farm fields, and is very dark despite the neighbors' mercury lights. The master bath has a window that lets onto the back yard. Even now I expect to see a face scrunched against that window one night. And I stifle a shudder when I hear critters rooting through the flowerbeds or scratching at the screen. At least nobody is hanging from the live oaks.

I want to grow up to be like this woman.

Mr. Gibbs died on Sunday. He was buried on Tuesday. He was a well-liked man. Rest his soul.

Good grief, wouldn't you know that the suspects in the sniper case would have a connection to Louisiana?

My candidate's husband had a major heart attack at 6 am on Friday morning. I found out Tuesday night when I started making my calls. He is in a touch-and-go situation. My candidate is as close as possible to his bedside and has not withdrawn from the race. If you're the praying kind, send one up for Jackie Gibbs. He's struggling for his life.

I'm interested in some feedback at janis22@bellsouth.net. I have enlisted to help a woman candidate for local judge unseat the first woman elected to the position six years ago. I genuinely believe that my candidate is better qualified for the position.

I have been given a call list for the precinct I live in. I have not been given a script. I do not know most of the people on the list.

What approach would be most effective?

On to other things. My blog-daddy Possumblog is both an alumnus and fan of Auburn. Ours has always been an LSU house. Lyman has been to Louisiana Tech, Northeast and Loyola. It wasn't until Lyman's son's graduation from LSU after seven years (note to Possum: hair regrows) that we can have official standing as LSU fans. So I genially wish that we kick your asses next week.

No balloons today. The weather was poor for the race, with a rainy sort of clouds and some gusting winds.

We arrived too late for the balloon glow last night, when the balloonists fire up their burners and float the balloons close to the ground. That's the stuff for childhood fantasy. It's magical. Pity. They started earlier than I remember.

We were early for the fireworks, though. This is a piddly little area, but fireworks are so advanced now that even we can afford a red heart-within-a-heart display.

We were also early enough for the Flying Elvises. They are professional parachuters who dropped from pretty damned high in the sky with golden sparklers attached, then landed on the grounds of Rosalie, a lovely old house that the Union occupied when they were in Natchez. It's situated on a bluff with a commanding view of the Mississippi River. If you follow the site you will see a lot of ugly, though historically significant, Victorian furniture. But in one room there is a Hepplewhite desk that is lovely. It's one of the pieces original to the house. It pleases me to think that the builder and his wife had better taste than most of what is on display now.

The ballooners will begin again around 8 tomorrow morning, weather permitting.

Lucy had a busy morning yesterday, trying to jump from her playtree onto our desk counter area, and a time playing Xena, and generally dissipating a toddler's energy, so she was a little tired when we parked on the levee at 7:15. (Note to readers: the levy here is never dry.) She hunkered on my shoulder and did not seem to mind the big noises. She joined in with our oohs and aahs.

I argued against a bird when Lyman proposed the notion. Try to take her from me now.

This weekend is a party weekend. Time again for the Great Mississippi Balloon Race. This will be Lucy's first experience with hot-air balloons. They often come hissing right over our house.

Back to "terrorism" as a motive in the Maryland shootings. Witnesses have reported seeing an "olive-skinned" person at the scene, some say with "middle eastern" features. Go to Jim Henley's site Unqualified Offerings for a complete local perspective.

I come from a family of seven children. We have one sure Native American ancestor. There is a strong split in our features. Four of us have brownish-red to dark brown hair, hazel to green eyes, with medium complexions. Three brothers have brownish-black hair, brown eyes and dark complexions, with a dread propensity to five-o-clock shadow.

Two of my brothers have told me that they have often been mistaken for Mediterranean or Latino on the basis of their looks. Of course, they eventually opened their mouths and were discovered for what they were -- pure Texans.

"Olive-skinned" gets us nowhere. In America we have Italians, Greeks, Native Americans, Indians, Asians, Middle Easterners and countless mongrels who may meet the desciption without implying foreign terrorism.

We also have Clairol, L'Oreal, Cover Girl, Maybelline, Clinique and Lancome.

I don't want to close the door on foreign terrorism, but our history has shown that we are perfectly capable of rearing murderers among ourselves.