GESENHUES: It’s not about red or blue

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November 12, 2008

By AMY GESENHUES The News and Tribune Wed Nov 12, 2008, 12:51 PM EST

Small town America had its very own starring role in the high drama movie that was this year's presidential campaign.

The Republican party tried to typecast us; we were the real America, the pro-America. We were the kind and good, working class folk. We were patriotic.

I'm all for kind and good hard-working patriots; but, the idea of typecasting entire communities based on population-size is problematic. Our small Southern Indiana town isn't any more American or patriotic than New York City or Washington, D.C. We may have bigger front yards and fewer restaurants, but we are all Americans.

I was born, raised and have lived in small-town America all my life. (Actually, I was born in Louisville, but as soon as I could leave the hospital, I was brought across the river to our home in Floyd County.) I attended college in small-town Alabama and when I graduated, I returned to my small Southern Indiana roots. There is a whole lot I like about being from and living in a small town. But my favorite thing about living where I do is not because I believe that I'm more American than someone from a big city. My favorite thing about my small town is Sunday dinner.

I imagine that our Sunday dinner routine is one of the few things that set my family apart from the big city dwellers who were indirectly and unfairly labeled un-American. For me, the difference between Floyds Knobs and New York City is not about being red or blue, but where you eat dinner Sunday.

Every Sunday my grandmother cooks for the entire family. Nevermind that she is in her 90s and there are always 25 or more of us. An average Sunday feast at Grandma's includes home-baked bread, a salad of some sort, the usual favorites that only she can cook and at least two dessert choices. All of my family crowds into her home, which is not much bigger than a NYC apartment. Some of us take a seat at the kitchen table. Others sit at the smaller table in the sunroom, but only after the 15-and-under crowd have finished eating and given up their seats.

The food is not your usual big city fare. There are no Ethiopian-inspired dishes or roasted fennel and lamb with a mandarin chutney sauce. But the conversation is probably not that far off from someone having sushi in Manhattan's Upper East Side. Just this Sunday, we discussed election results and a campaign mailer that had been sent out to the women of Floyd County. (We found it offensive, but I'll save that for another column.)

We also do the New York Times crossword puzzle that my Aunt prints every week. (And no, I'm not making this up just for the column.) The New York Times crossword puzzle has been a long-standing tradition at our Sunday dinners. The puzzle gets passed around throughout the afternoon and usually takes most of the day, along with most of the women at dinner to complete.

I could never buy into the notion that small towns are chock full of ultra-conservative, Republican-voting, gun-toting Americans. Maybe because my experience was never that red.

Now that the election is over, let's hope that the severe division between small-town and big-town America is coming to an end. Besides our Sunday dinner rituals, I'm curious about how different we really are from people who live in cities with taller buildings and bigger populations.

My family's Sunday dinners couldn't appear more small-town if Norman Rockwell showed up and painted us sitting around my grandmother's kitchen table, bowing our heads as she says grace and eating her chicken and dumplings. But our family is not one you can easily typecast. My cousin and her husband served in the military. Many of my family members still go to church every Sunday. Some of us are public school graduates, others went to private high schools and universities. We belong to different tax brackets and do not always vote for the same candidates.

One thing we all shared this election season was a sigh of relief when our state showed up blue on CNN's electoral map. For the first time in 44 years, it was nice to know that our role in the presidential election was not cast before the votes.

Amy Gesenhues is a freelance writer who lives in Floyd County. You can read her daily commentaries at www.amywroteit.wordpress.com. E-mail her directly at amy@amywroteit.com.

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