Every spring during the Easter break I would get in the family "truckster" and we would drive down south to Pinehurst, North Carolina to play golf for a week. I would try and qualify for the North/South tournament and play an afternoon round with my parents, 36 holes a day, 7 days. Back then you had to have a caddy if you didn't carry your own clubs so my parents split one - meaning one guy carried double bags. My parents favorite was a fellow named Whit Hagen.
This ritual went on for a number of years, from the time I was 10 until I was 20. We went by car and had the trip down to a "T" . We passed through the same Fancy Gap, West Virginia and this being before a lot of interstate, through some backwater towns in North Carolina that were so far out of my Michigan realm as to be without recognition. One year, I think I was about 17 or so, Whit Hagen wasn't there when we got there. We usually wrote him to tell him we were coming, just a chatty little letter, but after a few years of spending 10 hours a day with someone on a golf course for a week, you got to know the person a bit. Anyway, no Whit Hagen.
We went to the caddy master and asked and were told that Whit died over the winter - no details - he was just dead and gone. I specifically remember asking the caddy my parents had that day if he knew what happened and there was no real answer other than after lugging well to do white man's clubs around for 50-60 years he just died.
We knew some things about Whit. He lived right there on the outskirts of the golf course in amongst the several hundred families who made their living from the golf resort. His wife and died years before and his kids were relocated. He hadn't been to school much if at all and the only job he had was caddying in the three seasons when it wasn't so hot weather wise and in the summer he, like most, ground to a halt to wait out the heat. He started caddying when Pinehurst was built around the turn of the century.
With the legislation passed in now 13 states, Whit would have lost his right to vote. It is a right you know. Not a toy to be taken away from a kid when he misbehaves. It is a right. Like all rights, it has a limitation or two and those are spelled out in the Constitution.
Whit walked to work and to his grocery; never drove a car so he never had a license. He wasn't born in a hospital as there were no hospitals in his neck of the woods that would admit a black mother giving birth; no birth certificate. He made $10 a day plus tips so his income probably kept him from some fancy credit card and with no birth certificate there was no passport. Didn't matter much. Until Johnson got the Civil Rights stuff passed, Whit couldn't vote anyway. He couldn't read so couldn't pass the literacy test, couldn't pay the poll tax and like most county voting registrations it was only open for 10 minutes every forth Tuesday of odd numbered months ending in "y" and he was at work.
Whit could carry bags but for his rights as a voting citizen, he was shit out of luck.
Our little timepiece clock is spinning backwards now. Just like that panel of white-male representatives brought in that all white male set of experts to testify on the state of woman's reproductive rights, we got a bunch of gadflys who are trying to spring one on us that the Whit Hagens of the world are part of some huge voter fraud movement that has to be rooted out. Bury the silver. Hide the children.
The moral of this story is simple. If you can't vote, you got nothing and it is, in your life, what it is.
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