Free THE PARTLY CLOUDY PATRIOT by Sarah Vowell Page B

map seller or a good Californian had something to do with the fact that I dressed up as Wednesday Addams for Halloween that year. The Addams Family and The Munsters , shows where roses were grown for their thorns and pretty blondes were pitied as monsters, were on TV every afternoon after school when I was a little kid. Throw in three Pentecostal church services a week where they preached that the Antichrist would be a sunny, smooth, all-American charmer, and you have the makings of an insular worldview. Namely, a sneaking suspicion that there’s always a dark side of nice.
    When I called Graham those years ago to tell him I was quitting my job and leaving California to go to Chicago to study art history, he told me what a dumb idea that was and how I would learn a lot more about art by selling it. At the time, I laughed. But I can see now what he meant. There’s something educational about trying to see the good in things, holding some old picture in your hands and telling another person why it’s significant and excellent, special.

Dear Dead Congressman
     
    A rosy letter about voting written the day before an election day now infamous for poorly designed butterfly ballots, disenfranchisement of black voters, nationwide malfunction of voting machines, incompetent network TV coverage, and a snippy Hillary Clinton campaign worker insulting me as I walked into my polling place to vote for her candidate:

    November 6, 2000

    Dear Congressman Synar,

    I’ve never written to a dead man before. But there’s something I always meant to tell you, and I’m not going to let a little fatal cancer stop me. You probably won’t remember me. My mother used to do your mother’s hair in Muskogee in the sixties. My parents still have one of her paintings, by the way, a brownish still life with flowers. When you were running for the House that first time, in 1978, I handed out some pamphlets for you at my town ‘s rodeo. I’m from Braggs. I was eight. I live in New York City now, and it’s been a long time since I’ve been to a rodeo in Oklahoma (or anywhere else). At the Braggs rodeo, you shook my hand and gave me the “Synar for Congress” button off your own lapel—which I still have—and told me it was the last one off the printing presses. You’d think Elvis was handing me his sweaty scarf or something, I was so excited. I realize now how young you were. You were twenty-seven then, younger than I am now.
    There’s this letter you sent me right after your election. I’ve kept it with me all these years. It’s written on House of Representatives letterhead marked “Mike Synar, Member-Elect, 2nd District, Oklahoma.” It reads:
     
Sarah—
    Thank you so much for your help during our campaign. Don’t forget that when you become eighteen you should get registered to vote. Get involved in government and our government will be better.
    Thank you again Sarah
    Best Wishes,
Mike Synar
     
    Lord knows, you probably mailed hundreds of these notes during your sixteen years in the House. It’s even possible an aide wrote it, but in my heart of hearts I believe it came from your own pen. I must have pulled it out of the envelope and reread it a thousand times, dreaming. Someday, I thought.
    How I pined to vote. In 1985, the movie The Breakfast Club came out. In my teen world, it was a really big deal. Every kid who saw it was supposed to identify with one of the stereotype characters—the rebel, the weird girl, the jock, the nerd, the princess. I identified with Anthony Michael Hall’s nerd, Brian. (Though I was only about nine months away from turning into black-clad, antisocial Ally Sheedy.) There was this one scene, my favorite, in which Ally Sheedy has just stolen Anthony Michael Hall’s wallet. Jock Emilio Estevez is looking at the nerd Hall’x phony driver’s license, pointing out that it says the nerd, who looks like he’s twelve, is sixty-eight years old. Clearly, the kid’s no barfly, so the jock’s