No cell phones, no tv, no portable radios, no computers, no results

      You had to be 21 to vote in those days, and I was already married, living in Penn Yan in our honeymoon cottage on North Main Street (rent $50 a month, but Norm would later risk going into business for himself and by the time Avi was born we had moved to an unheated still-after-the-war- rent-controlled-$18.75-a month apartment also on North Main Street)-- but I digress.

      So I cast my first vote at some polling place just where the hill starts on Liberty Street.  Had not registered as a Democrat -- that'd be as much as your life was worth in Yates County (smallest county in New York State, btw.)

     I went into that booth  with every intention of voting for Henry Wallace, third-party candidate who had been Secretary of Agriculture, and whose rallies back at college had featured country music with guitars.  I can still see my hand poised to pull the lever for him -- and then I moved my hand up and voted for Truman.

    But here's the interesting part -- I remember being at the wheel of a car the next day, and the car was stopped in the middle of the quad at Syracuse University.  I must have driven my Mother there and we must have been visiting my sister, who would have been a freshman.

    What I remember is that we put the car radio on loud, and students were cramming around and poking their heads in the windows to hear the noon news, because no one knew yet if Dewey or Truman had won. 

THAT'S A TRIUMPHANT TRUMAN