Column by Hal Walter
Mountan Life – December 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine
“Our priorities is our faith.”
— G.W. Bush, Greensboro, N.C., Oct. 10, 2000
ON THE MORNING AFTER the alleged election, I nearly set my house ablaze.
It wasn’t because a minority of Americans had apparently elected a new president who does not always display a grasp of subject-verb agreement. It was simply because I had become too distracted by CNN, the Internet, morning dishes, e-mail, braying jackasses, and the never-ceasing ring of the telephone to pay attention to the smoke signals that were coming out of my chimney, as though the college of cardinals had convened inside to elect a pope.
In the resulting haze of neurological disorganization, I had left open the ash-pan underneath a hot aspen fire, which was vented by 20 feet of creosote-choked metal pipe. The effect was not unlike a blast torch on steroids.
Well, I never said I’m smart enough to be president either. But at least I know subject-verb agreement and how to stay calm when matters have gotten completely out of hand.
There’s a small lineshack cabin that sits about a quarter-mile below my house. I can say confidently no early-day Boneyard Park pioneer nearly burned his house down during a media trance, even with the distraction of howling wind and snow sifting between the cracks. If I had been homesteading in the neighborhood in those days, early dwellers may have named this place Bonehead Park instead. But at least they would have known who their president was.
How did it get this way? At one point in time I had only a radio and didn’t even turn it on that much. Next came a TV with reception so bad it wasn’t even worth watching. Then the VCR. At some point in time I quit full-time newspaper employment and a Macintosh computer moved into the house.
It seemed to unleash an avalanche of other devices that connected me to the outside world. More Macs followed, along with a fax machine, modems, finally an Internet connection and e-mail. Then the satellite television dish. Suddenly I found myself with a “web presence” (http://shell.amigo.net/~outthere) and two phone lines — one dedicated to the Misinformation Superhighway.
I am very much aware of the irony that I have sprouted all of these invisible roots that ground me to the real world in an attempt to escape the real world. All totaled, my communications costs are about twice what I make writing a monthly column for a certain regional magazine.
I tried to scale back. Last year the satellite television company, Primestar, announced that it had been purchased by Direct TV which would be “upgrading” customer service and equipment. I decided to just let my Primestar crash to Earth and not upgrade. I would save money and not be subjected to garbage such as Howard Stern, Price is Right reruns and reruns of bad movies like Urban Cowboy, Die Hard and Beverly Hills Cop.
So one day we woke up to a blank TV screen. It was OK for a while. I built my web page during this time. Then my wife started renting videos.
Instead of satellite TV, I was subjected to an endless stream of Jane Austen-type movies. After a month, we had spent more on movie rental than monthly satellite service — and without the benefit of an occasional football game to break up the steady stream of kidney-pie British accents in my living room; I soon knew exactly why we dumped their tea in the harbor. I called Direct TV and within two days I once again had all the bad programming I could use, including Denver network channels.
Having Denver channels suddenly elevated my stature in this sparsely populated neighborhood to heights usually reserved for those with 7,000-square-foot glass-walled ridgetop homes. My friend and fellow former newspaperman Patrick offered to bring homemade posoli and microbrew over to my global communications center if he could watch the election returns here.
It would be sort of like the bad old newspaper days, except we wouldn’t have to deal with incompetence, there would be less stress, we could drink beer, and we wouldn’t even have to stay up late.
Well, we were wrong on all four counts. First the boneheads in the media apparently botched all calls on the election in Florida. Things got more tense than any election I’d ever witnessed, and at some point we realized that something stronger than beer would be needed to calm our nerves, in fact a shot of Bushmills Irish whiskey. (Patrick’s last name is O’Grady and I have so many McClellans in my family tree that the branches practically sprout shamrocks.)
Finally, even after Patrick left shaking his head, I stayed up late. I tried going to bed, but ended up back in front of the TV just in time to see the networks call the election. After tossing and turning the rest of the night with the words “I is your new president” rattling around inside my head, I awoke to the national distraction that ultimately led to the crackling of fire high in my chimney.
I was pretty calm. I shut down the air and damper. I removed all the burning wood from the firebox. I got the hose ready and called a neighbor who brought over a long ladder. If it got out of control I would simply climb up on the roof and dowse the thing. Slowly the fire ran out of fuel and oxygen and burned itself out.
While I waited for the chimney to cool, I watched CNN and tried to no avail to get on the New York Times web site in an effort to learn what exactly was going on with the election. Later, while the chimney sweep swabbed out the pipe and vacuumed my stove’s innards, I participated in a two-hour three-way conference call to New York City. All three participants in this call, including myself, were simultaneously on line and editing a web site. I felt as if wires were running into my ears and controlling the movements of my finger tips. I had become an electronic zombie, controlled by the tendrils of technology linked to the outside world.
And I still didn’t know squat.
THE FOLLOWING DAY I drove to town and picked up the local weekly, the Wet Mountain Tribune. No surprises here. All Republican candidates won by a margin of about 2 to 1 in Custer County, which the exception of Larry Handy, who beat Democrat Jim Austin by a narrow margin of only 45 votes. Nobody was calling for a recount. Voters had also approved a $3.75 million bond for new classrooms at the school.
But back at home, things were still unclear. Through the wires connecting my home to the outer world came talk of recounts and revotes.
Most interesting was the possibility that the media had called Florida correctly the first time when they put it in the Gore column based on exit polls, which surely were more accurate than the balloting.
Everything seemed so confusing until I went out to do my evening chores and happened to glance down at the vacant little line shack. It occurred to me that someone lived there before there was electricity in the area. The main chore of the day was digging potatoes, tending the livestock, and cutting enough wood to stay warm until the next sunrise.
A quick trip to town for a newspaper may have taken a day on horseback or by wagon. The people who lived there didn’t know squat about what went on in the outside world. And they probably didn’t care. Somehow this put everything back into perspective.
I came back inside and turned off the TV and computer; I refused to answer the phone. Sooner or later the election controversy would run out of fuel and oxygen and burn itself out. I built a fire and listened to it crackle as it licked the freshly cleaned stovepipe. Tomorrow I would tend the livestock and dig potatoes.
Hal Walter practices the art of subject-verb agreement from the head of Boneyard Park in Custer County; his name appears above essays and after the words “pay to the order of” but it will never appear on a ballot.
