All year as I’ve plundered photo albums and boxes of photos, each time I saw this one, I knew I was saving it for today. I don’t know who shot it, but it’s me on the November election day when my father first ran for office. I channeled my nerves into cleaning. I swept our house on Twelfth Avenue. Then I swept the front porch. Then I swept the steps, our sidewalk, and the sidewalk next to the street. We had the cleanest sidewalk in Tuscaloosa that day.
I don’t know why I had my mother’s Plymouth at school (it’s the pale blue car parked next to our sidewalk). I must have needed to drive to and from home (a couple of hours away) and the boyfriend’s car wasn’t going to be available (I spy it in the lot across the street). I also notice that I’m in my socks. How typical: Sweep the sidewalks, but ruin a pair of socks doing it. It was the first year I wasn’t a teenager, but I was still doing teenage things!
Daddy won that election, by the way.
Now I have some cleaning to do. I wish I had bellbottom jeans to wear.