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Ain't that America? How a rural Kansas pink house conversation made my day [1]

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Date: 2022-10-27

“I’m not a fan of ‘YOUR’ president,” it began, but it continued with an interesting twist. “But I have no idea what is happening to current Republicans. They’ve all sold out to Trump.” What concerned him most was Russia-Ukraine. “I cannot believe I’m listening to people talk about wanting Russia to win or that we should just let Ukraine fend for their own. Don’t they remember history? Russia will not stop at Ukraine, give them Ukraine and why wouldn’t they take Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia?” He finished with: “Republicans supporting appeasement is something I never thought I’d see in my lifetime.” I was a bit surprised.

We walked outside to do some work in his workshop, a source of pride and joy where he has built cabinets, clocks, and furniture during his retirement. When my dad was younger, he took up woodwork to restore the home they live in; help to build the home my brother lives in; and build items to sell. I lifted up the back of a cabinet he needed to staple and finish so it’d be ready for my mother, who was at rehab in the morning for a pinched nerve. Age and having six kids was wearing on her. She had a serious complication a few months ago that had rendered her hospitalized and near septic and now that most of the danger had passed, she was forced into rehab to help with the healing process. It wasn’t always the best, however, and post-rehab was uncomfortable at best. Building her a dresser that was lower to the ground, with no drawers so she could easily grab clothes, was something he could do for her to make life just a little bit easier. I had no problem helping.

My mother arrived back from rehab about 30 minutes later and politics is always a discussion in our family. So back again we go. But the surprises kept coming. Delving too deep into politics would potentially result in repercussions in their small town, but the disappointment in some of the candidates who had run, and the fact that some were running not based on doing good for the public but for themselves, said a lot. We all agreed that people in federal office should not be allowed to trade stocks. My father went farther and said it was garbage that the capital gains tax was lower than the payroll tax, since so many make their living by means that are only handled through capital gains, making the rich richer while others pay the bills.

I didn’t convince them to vote straight-ticket Democratic; that certainly wasn’t even a potential plan. But having a conversation about where things stand opened my eyes as to how we can all talk to each other about what matters to them, and what they want to pass on to their children and grandchildren.

I left for the drive home and looked down, realizing I’d need to get gas. I had been listening to an audiobook and felt like I had enough range and could focus on my book and get closer to Paola before I put gas in my tank. Pulling over outside of Paola, I stopped at a Casey’s. I stopped for gas, sure, but also admittedly for a slice of pizza on the road; something to snack on during the journey. They were out of pizza but two good old boys in John Deere hats stood near the counter drinking a coffee and a Red Bull, and talking about the election. I didn’t have time to really focus on it, but as I walked out of the Casey’s one of them did, too, and headed to a truck with Miami County plates—and a Sharice Davids sticker.

Conversations in the heartland will not change everything overnight. It is about the ability to have those conversations, even with conservative relatives, and talk about the things that matter to you and your own familyr. There is a powerful theory and meaning to this; to understand what sonder means to you and to them. Sonder is the philosophical idea that everyone in the world has a story as powerful as your own: that you experience your own story but in someone else’s life, you are only a small side character. Or, maybe, you aren’t a character at all: You are just in the backdrop or you don’t exist. The more. you allow others to understand your experience and the more you open yourself up to their experiences, the more you can have a participatory dialogue that can build the story of our future.

Just down the road from Casey’s, a long string of small houses painted in the traditional older Kansas pastel palette of rural homes—pink, blue, and cream colors—circled the area. For just a an hour or so, things move from the background to the foreground, and we stop being small characters in the day-to-day life of people, even close family members, and we are real parts of their story. Those little pink houses? It might take a lot of work—a lot of very personal work, not just hit-and-run,—but we can build the story of their future.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/10/27/2131635/-Ain-t-that-America-How-a-rural-Kansas-pink-house-conversation-made-my-day

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