Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Capt. R.E. Ludlow had time to do quiet surveillance, his amusement and love for his two eldest grandchildren competing for the top of his mind as they decided who the icons were around them … they had researched his business partners of their own accord, and were as impressed as he was, accounting for the fact that Andrew was 10 and Eleanor was 11. There was a lot they still could not understand … but there was a lot that they could, and he thanked God as it struck him that unlike his parents and grandparents, he was not in their way of getting a good understanding of human life, and that important people were not just marble-colored people.
But, this of course led off into the weeds in other ways … and Capt. Ludlow found himself trying not to ruin his eavesdropping by laughing out loud.
“So, Andrew,” Eleanor said, “we've got a problem.”
“What?”
“This country needs a whole bunch of other materials to make statues out of,” Eleanor said, “and I don't know if anyone is ready for the expense.”
“I guess not,” Andrew said. “Cousin Harry [H.F. Lee, their cousin] may be the only R.E. Lee statue left in Virginia when it is all done, and all he has to do is shave his beard and trim his mustache a different way when he is tired of that, and it is all over there too.”
“Not really,” Eleanor said. “He would have to get out of shape, too, and that's just not Cousin Harry.”
“True,” Andrew said. “I've never seen him in a gray suit, though – he avoids Confederate colors like the plague.”
“Cousin Harry is definitely his own man,” Eleanor said, “and I wonder sometimes that if our shared very distant Lee uncle were to come back, if they would even like each other.”
“Now that's a thought, Eleanor. We can probably get some biographies of Big Uncle Robert and figure that out, but first, the statue problem: since statues are being taken down, we gotta look at the fact that it's probably not in the budget to do what they really need to do. Marble is expensive, but what would we make a Major Dubois or Sgt. Trent or Gonzalez out of – men of African, Latino, and Native hues?”
“Bronze is not as expensive as marble,” Eleanor said, “but you surely would need a whole lot of it for, say, Major Dubois and his dad – they are both as tall as Grandpa, and if Monsieur Dubois was not stooped just the tiniest bit for age, I think he would be just the tiniest bit taller than Grandpa.”
“Monsieur Dubois is taller than Grandpa,” Andrew said. “He is only a little stooped if he sits perfectly still, but he has so much energy when he talks and laughs that it straightens him up. It would take a real artist to capture him in bronze, so we gotta budget for that too.”
“I don't even know how you would do that,” Eleanor said. “Major Dubois sits perfectly because he is so quiet and calm, but really, his dad needs a big bronze mobile made of him, so when the wind blows through it, you can see him waving his arms and laughing!”
“I agree,” Andrew said. “That's going to be so much more expensive than a marble statue. Now, Sgt. Trent, our neighbor – a man like him in bright bronze – perfect, just standing there with Gracie and Milton and Velma, and Vanna and Melvin on either side – and Mrs. Trent there with her arms around him – the perfect Black family statue.”
“Yep,” Eleanor said. “Expensive, but beautiful – a lot of bronze used there.”
“And then, consider Sgt. Tito Gonzalez,” Andrew said. “With his color, that's going to be tough – that's a dark gold kind of thing, and gold is super expensive.”
“Even gold-plated bronze – still going to be tough on the state budget,” Eleanor said.
Andrew thought hard, and thought hard again.
“I got it,” he said. “They didn't put up all the marble statues overnight, so they can spread it out over a few years – find an icon of a marble or bronze or gold hue, and just start saving money. Just first find, first serve, so put up and pay off the first statue, and then the second, and then the third, and so forth.”
“We need to write the governor,” Eleanor said. “Since they have only been thinking about marble-colored people for this long, he's going to need time to get all this together.”
“Right – and if we don't see change in eight years, we vote him out,” Andrew said. “Eight years is more than long enough to do the right thing. In 2028, you'll be 19 and I'll be 18, and it'll be an election year, so we give him that long or whoever is in office time to get it together, and if we don't see people like the icons we know fairly represented, we vote whoever is in office out.”
“That sounds fair to me,” Eleanor said. “I wonder if we are going to go with the Republicans with their elephant icon or the Democrats with their donkey?”
Andrew thought hard about that.
“When we register to vote,” he said, “we go with the ones who sees the people that we see as the great people we know them to be. Don't get me wrong. I'm a more or less marble-colored people and so are you, but like I was telling Milton with his invisibility headband project, we need to see all kinds of people like him more in places where they can be recognized. We figure out which party understands that the best, along with all the other stuff they have to figure out.”
“You know,” she said, “a lot of people are what is called independent now, because they don't feel like either party does it right. They basically vote purple – whatever makes sense of red or blue.”
“I like purple,” Andrew said, “even as an idea. I'm not sure I completely understand it, but we can research it. We've got eight years to figure it all out, so let's first figure out what we are going to write to the governor about this statues issue, get his name and address off Google, write and send the letter, and then maybe find out what purple-colored voters do.”
“Let me go get the good paper – he's a governor, after all.”
“Okay – you do that, and I'll search up a letter to government official type of template we can work with. I mean, you just can't write a governor any kind of way with an issue this important and expensive.”