Barbara Vansa has retired from the Milam County Clerk’s office after 33 years and was honored with a nice reception there Friday.
To which my contribution was tying up a little business that has been pending for the past 28 years.
I finally brought in Thorndale’s voting box from the 1990 Democratic Primary.
To be more exact, from March 8, 1990. And March 9, 1990.
You see, eight of us spent the entire night in the Milam County courthouse waiting for that box to come in. It’s a wonderful courthouse but it’s not a great hotel.
Barbara was one, because it was her job. I was one because it was my job.
Now, you have to realize this. It was 1990. There were no electronic voting machines. You voted on paper ballots and then they were counted by looking at each ballot and, using a pencil, writing down the results.
We knew that going in. What we didn’t know was that, triggered by a three-candidate county judge race and a hotly-contested three-candidate Thorndale JP race, 573 people would vote in the Thorndale box that day.
For reference, that’s 200 more than voted in Thorn-dale in high-tech, push-a-button 2018.
In 1990 the Thorndale vote counting apparatus was two elderly ladies with pencils and paper.
There were over 40 races on the ballots.
We knew it would be a late night. By 11:30, though, only two boxes hadn’t come in, the big Cameron box, just down the street and Thorndale’s.
The Cameron box showed up at 12:30 a.m. I remember the phone ringing several times. It was the big-city newspapers wondering what was holding up the results as their final deadlines came and went.
I snickered and told my companions I didn’t have to worry about deadlines. Our Reporter typesetters were coming in at 7 a.m. so that was my deadline. Ha, ha.
We waited. And waited.
About 2:30 I walked around downtown Cameron. I was so tired I remember convincing myself Ben Milam’s statue had his other arm raised at the beginning of the night.
I may have asked him about it. Most of that night was a little hazy.
A little after 4, I made a trip to the restroom, which is in the courthouse basement. I went down an old spiral staircase I’d never seen before or since and kept finding desks with turned-on 4o-watt bulbs dangling above, like someone had just been working and I’d disturbed them.
I returned to my companions. It was like being trapped in an elevator. We ran out of conversation—yes, really—and just sort of stared blankly at each other and waited to be rescued.
Which we finally were.
The box came in at 6:30 a.m., with daylight streaking the eastern sky.
The late Willie Mae Wieser, county clerk at the time, said she was going to go quickly eat breakfast, because she had to be back in an hour to open up the office. She wasn’t joking.
I made it back to The Reporter to be told by our crew: “You got up early!” I didn’t hit anybody.
I think.
Every single time Barbara has seen me in the past 28 years she has asked me: “Has that Thorndale box come in yet?”
Well, now it has.
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