Warmblood I
By Scot Tolman
f my father had his way Nixon would still be President. To quote Carroll
G. Tolman, Sr.: “All politicians are crooks. You might as well elect a good one.” Committed to her role as a 1950s housewife, my mother always insisted on voting for whomever my father voted. She’d say, “Well, if I voted for somebody else, we’d just cancel out each other’s votes.” Of course, that someone else would have been from
a fringe party, such as the Democrats. I grew up in a classic New England version of the mill-working, WW II veteran, God-fearing Republican, lower-middle class America. Consequently, when, in the slight inebriation and good cheer of a particularly competitive Tolman family card game, I made the mistake of casually mentioning that I hadn’t voted for Reagan and I thought I was becoming an atheist (why I thought sharing either of these pieces of information was a good idea at the time, I have no idea now), the you- know-what hit the proverbial fan. My mother’s response: “Oh, Scot.” Of course, as you
read the “Oh, Scot,” you have to picture a hand going to her breast, tears coming to her eyes, and lips quivering with the knowledge that her oldest son would not only eventually be burning in hell, but he would also probably be living in a commune, producing bi-racial grandchildren and smoking marijuana with his new liberal friends. My father’s response: “If you drove a tank through
Europe under Old Blood and Guts during the War, you’d believe in God.” His affect, head listing to the left and shaking in
that slow, disapproving manner that tells you what a disappointment you are and how tragically you’ve failed him, was less histrionic than my mother’s, but nonetheless effective. His response to my religious revelations were less subtle, however: “Inngggit!” It’s difficult to put the particular noise my father makes when he has dismissed your opinion into standard phonetic symbols. The sound lasts for a fraction of a second. It’s nasal; it’s loud; and his head
82 November/December 2012
makes a sharp, snap backwards as the “t” comes to an abrupt glottal stop (which leads me to question whether
the sound is created by an intake of breath or an exhalation). Then, it’s over. His face gives absolutely no indication he’s done anything other than study his cards. The only proof you have that the sound existed in the first place is the humiliating punch from which your ego is still reeling. I’ve told this story because, for the first time in
many, many elections, my father sees a plank in the Republican candidate’s platform that could make me the prodigal son and sway me to return to the right and the light: Rafalca. Yes! Mitt Romney’s “dancing horse,” as David
Letterman calls her. Although I’ve pooh-poohed it when people have asked me, “Dressage? (pronounced in more ways than I had imagined possible) Isn’t that what your horses do?” Part of me wants to scream, “YES!!! That is what my horses do! YES!! We could have four, or maybe even eight, years of dressage being in the national spotlight because our President and his wife are the kind of rich people we need supporting our U.S. riders and breeders! YES!!! YES!!! YES!!!” Of course, then I see Michelle doing push-ups with Ellen, or Barack making a crack about starting a micro-brewery in the White House in case the whole presidency thing doesn’t work out, and I realize that I really love these people and the good they’re trying to do for us. Then I hear my father’s response to the lovely Rafalca, “Good looking mare. We had a bay mare looked a lot like that. Hazel. I rode with my mother many a time when she drove that mare to Keene and back to Richmond. Better part of 25 miles, round trip. You going to vote for him?” Rafalca or Obama. This is,
indeed, a tough election for me.
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