My dad was never one for fancy cars, gravitating instead to barely functional cars. When I was a little kid he drove a Mazda hatchback that was basically a large tin can with a sputtering motor attached. This was the car that ferried him back and forth to law school, and credit to the Mazda tin can line, most of the time it worked. But every few months, we’d get a phone call that Daddy’s car had broken down. 

This was our bat signal. Pop, Mom and I would pack a bag, load it into one of the functional cars and head off toward whatever spot between Columbus, Ohio and South Charleston, West Virginia the Mazda had chosen to stage its latest collapse.

I’m not sure if cars were much less reliable in the ‘80’s or if my dad’s heavy driving and poor maintenance habits were to blame. Not that I cared – none of the grown up’s around me seemed upset, “Daddy’s car breaking down” being a fact of life, so I just took it as the natural order of things. Then, as now, the Columbus to South Charleston road is an indirect wind through farmland, so inevitably the breakdown spot was “About two miles past the red barn on 163” or “Right before the stoplight at Point Pleasant.”

Once the Mazda was obliging enough to break down right in front of an actual farm. To me, “outside” meant “backyard” and “pet” meant “cat” or “dog”. Chasing after the farm kids that day, I saw an outside that stretched further than we could run and stroked the feathered necks of their pet chickens. And inside the barn was a swing. I soared over the hay, marveling at this amazing parallel world. 

Those were the best of times with my dad – when his experiences, intentional or not, opened up another facet of the world to me. But sometimes, in the midst of his usual MO of more or less ignoring me, his world punctured mine with anger. 

It was the sounds that clued me in. Stomping of the floor, shaking of the walls, his voice raised and straining, growling with anger. The entry to our front door was tiled in sharp edged black stones that were always cold. It was like a pit at the bottom of the stairs, the unwelcoming gateway behind our little-used front door. It was there that my dad’s stomps one evening shook the bannister and richocheted off the walls of my room. 

I willed myself silent, protected mode, and light-footed my way to the top of the stairs. Peering down, I saw my dad, fists balled and face flushed, with a newspaper clenched in his hand. “Unh! Unh! Unh!” he yelled over and over and over again, stomping with every beat. I shrank back, tiptoed back to the safe zone of my room. 

Later that night, I asked my mom why Daddy had been so mad. “He’s working very hard. But the newspaper said the other guy is going to win,” she told me, squeezing soapy bath water down my spine. 

This was why we weren’t supposed to criticize my dad at home. He was public, he was out there, so the whole world could criticize him. The family who lived in the house across from my elementary school criticized him, with a big “Down With Robb” sign in their front yard. Actually, that’s not what it said. It said, “Vote for McDougall” or “Vote for Smith” or whoever was running against my dad that time. 

It could have said “Vote for Satan” as far as I was concerned. The person on this sign, whoever they were, wanted to take my dad’s job away. The downtown office, the after dinner calls from irate citizens, the cheerful greetings of “How you doing Mayor” when my dad pulled into a gas station or restaurant – it would all be gone if McDougall-Smith-Satan and their band of wicked minions got their way.

Around town, “Vote for Satan” signs sprung up like poison mushrooms. I eyed the landscape for this enemy propaganda, silently noting which homes and stores should be regarded with enmity in the years to come. “Vote for Robb” signs were the opposite, pockets of welcome relief, and the property owners who sported them were branded in my mind as friends. Not that anyone knew I was doing this. No one knew I could read. 

It was the fall of 1986. My mom was about to have a new baby. My dad was running for office again, making this my first of many childhood elections to come. The carefree days of preschool were behind me. I was in kindergarten now, and shit was about to get real.