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An Old Man, His Dog, and a Red Hat

At a crossroads store somewhere in Alabama

Terry Barr
5 min readNov 10, 2024
Photo by Hidden on Unsplash

It’s a lot to process, this last couple of weeks. And I don’t want to blame the pollster at The Des Moines Register, because it was my choice to believe in her or not, to pin my hopes on her or not.

But I did.

I was even buoyed when working at the polls, because in our red district, Harris was outvoted only by 75 votes, more or less. Almost 250 people voted for her, and so over 320 voted for the Republican presidential candidate. Not bad, and so I believed that if this was any indication…

But indications are about as good as assumptions, asses, and yard signs. We took our yard sign down that night, before we knew anything, though North Carolina was already looking iffy, at best.

I won’t bore anyone with yet another post-mortem, but the good news is that after feeling like someone had punched me deep in the gut when I discovered the truth early Wednesday morning, I am neither afraid nor despairing, and I refuse to be. I am reading all about it, but I’m also finishing the first draft of a book, teaching four courses, and thinking about the upcoming holidays, our family gatherings, a Kacey Musgraves concert, and how much more to tithe to the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, our local humane society, and our local food bank.

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Terry Barr
Terry Barr

Written by Terry Barr

I write about music, culture, equality, and my Alabama past in The Riff, The Memoirist, Prism and Pen, Counter Arts, and am an editor for Plethora of Pop.

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