Thread by @TheLastRefuge2

1. What follows are not my words, but they are important words from a comfortably invisible woman in her twilight years.... These words convey a quiet sentiment, a warning of sorts that has risen to its current place, just below the surface.

Pay attention:

2. "My dad was always one of the election night counters in Roosevelt county, rural Montana, in the 1940s and 1950s."

3. "Our farm was about nine miles out of town and I remember watching him leave after supper on election night, after the chores were done, and not coming back until sometimes as late as midnight (which was a notable time for any farmer to come home in our community)."

4. "They counted the paper ballots. They sat around a table with paper pads, making chit marks…. 4 at a time and then a diagonal line represent #5 going through the 4. All counters stayed until the marks were counted and recorded…

5. "and then two of them went to a telephone and called in the totals."

"End of vote counting. Not surprising that an accurate number was reported."

6. "One of the men in our community died unexpectedly on his farm. Some weeks later, all of his neighbors and friends were organizing the farmstead for “the auction” when all the large equipment, household goods his wife would not need in her new home would be sold...

7. ..."and they discovered something they all understood. It was written clear and plain with a wide-lead carpenter’s pencil on the inside wall of one of the big hay bins:

“I owe K. Olson 25 bushels of wheat.”

8. "It was a simple task for those farmers, caring for the last property of their friend, to get 25 bushels of wheat measured out (that day) and taken over to K. Olson’s farm, which was just down the road.

It was right. It was honest. It was NORMAL."

9. "It’s been a hard slog for those of us who grew up in such communities to learn not to trust, not to respect, and not to believe. A hard slog, as I say, but we are getting there."

10. "Recently I learned how to handle the ammo loader for an AR-15 in case its owner is task-oriented and needs me to help.

A long hard slog, but we are ready."

11. Consider the gravity of those words.

Consider them very carefully.

God bless.

/END