The future will be better, they say

SWING STATE, USA - Riding along a high ridge on my way to town I can see two water towers, each reflecting a soft white autumn sun, tallest structures in a grain elevator town first stumbled upon by white guys some 180 years ago. Native Americans roamed these hills 10,000 years ago but oh my gosh if old Chris Columbus gets a national holiday for sailing while white then it's only right that a couple of smelly uneducated trappers lay claim to a place and call it a town. It's a way we have.

On the back seat of my car lies a completed absentee ballot, thus the trip to town, to an official US Postal Office or at least a blue receptacle. OK, OK, not exactly completed, the backside offering up obscure offices which they tell me make up the backbone of a great America but I do wonder, wonder why there are so many layers of well-meaning people who can decide where my fence can stand and I need to let it go. I do, but I also won't vote for any of ‘em. Where I come from that's called democracy.

The air is filled with corn dust, as all day long and well in to last night gargantuan pickers purchased when the markets were better crawl across rolling hills, leaving stubble in their wake, causing beautiful sunsets in the half light of early evening, enough to make you believe it's all gonna be OK. But it can never be OK. Never has been, never will be. I still dream about Richard Nixon.

We produce the wholesome milk of human history here every four years but please don't turn around because someone who's never read Bill's iambic pentameter is running behind us, rewriting even as we lurch toward a chasm of our own making. The future will be better they say and I'm thinking of something I saw last year, a place where five children died in an automobile wreck in the middle of god-knows nowhere and I pass the cross designating the spot where the young breathing stopped and I'm thinking ‘man, we're screwed if we keep this up,' a selfie nation wherein everyone has an inalienable right to be a blowhard, drink too much, carry a gun, and declare that his is bigger than anyone else's.

Downshifting as I near town it looks like everyone hired a realtor but no, these signs declare preferences for sheriff, president, senate, sprouting up from well-trimmed lawns, some professionally produced, others hand painted in someone's garage with a dime-store stencil and a spray can. Passing slowly on a sidewalk is one of the town notables, old guy who needs to be on the move, down the road, walking the highways until recently and now sticks to town, mothers holding their children tight when he passes because there's no honor in being poor, unwashed and at odds with a world where the local ‘po-lice' call the shots and, by the way, who elected them? What a country.

Ballot dropped off. Time to turn toward home where my cats don't judge, don't even vote though they have more sense than some I've encountered and here we are, once again choosing folks who make laws, cheat on their wives, and act like it's all OK. None of it makes sense to me but we got to keep trying, keep working out what seems right, fair, and sensible. In other words, quit complaining and get a hold of a ballot. It doesn't feel like much, but it's all we've got.

' Kurt Ullrich lives in rural Jackson County.