Tears and Laughter: June 3 is approaching…let the games begin

I moved to Camden just in time for the 1996 local elections. I covered them for The

Clarke County Democrat.

And, to be fair, the publisher and editor, Jim Cox, did try and warn me that I was entering a field of play in Wilcox County that was not going to mirror in any way what I was familiar with in Clarke.

And he was right.

All of this was in the shadows of current commissioner Reginald Southall’s contested win over then commissioner David Wright by absentee votes. Only 34 people had actually traveled to the polls to vote for Southall. Wright received 565 votes. It was a clear victory…until the absentee ballots were counted. Wright gathered only 55 absentee votes. Southall received 597, allowing him – as I’m sure everyone remembers – to win by 11 votes.

So there were already whispers when we got to the annex saying, “Watch… It will come down to a hand count so they can control the vote.”

The “press” sat in the jury box and consisted of Ivey Griffin, with Thomasville’s 95.5 WJDB Radio, Justin Walker – more affiliated with me than the press, and me. That was it.

Hollis Curl, the late publisher and editor of The Wilcox Progressive Era, was of course covering things too, but he was in amidst the crowd. He was mingling, asking questions.

The rest of us were more or less just watching the circus, waiting on results.

And the most striking thing to me that I will always remember was the number of people eating fried chicken wings in the courtroom.

The story was that everybody who was interested could get a free ride to the poll and all the chicken wings they could eat. But I have no way of verifying that particular fact. All I know is that I had never seen half the people in a crowded Clarke County courtroom snacking on chicken wings.

Never.

Not one time.

Then, honest to God – and there are people who will read this who were there that night and can vouch for this – an inmate wearing an orange “Wilcox County Jail” jumpsuit came out and worked on the computer after everybody willing to try had given it a spin.

Before too late it was announced to be true what the whispers had predicted, “Hand count… No other choice.”

At that hour there were the ballot boxes from two precincts that had yet to arrive.

In fact, nobody knew exactly where they were or who had them.

By midnight the crowd had dwindled. The floor was left littered with chicken bones and paper campaign fans. Everyone left waiting was informed the results would be taped to the courthouse door the following day.

And they were. Around noon.

That was many moons and similar elections ago. If the same names mean the same games…the June 3 primaries ought to be a show worth watching.

Amanda Walker is a columnist with The West Alabama Watchman, AL.com and The Wilcox Progressive Era. Contact her at https://www.facebook.com/AmandaWalker.Columnist.