Did you vote in last Tuesday’s Presidential Primary Election?

The story on the front page of this week’s Faribault County Register reports that only 20 percent of registered voters in the county did vote. Not the whole population of the county, only those who are registered to vote.

And that number means only two out of every 10 took the time to vote.

It was not surprising. Neither were the results.

Some people I talked to recently said they normally vote in every election, but were not going to vote in this one.

There were various reasons. The fact that they had to declare themselves as Republicans or Democrats or Legal Marijuana Now party supporters was one of the reasons. A few folks were quite surprised to learn they had to choose which party’s ballot they would get. One person at the polls asked the election judges for the Independent Party ballot. I am not sure if that person was serious or just making a point.

Because, there wasn’t one.

Some people told me they were going to vote for someone other than the top two candidates, just because they didn’t like the top two.

The one surprise to some people at the polls was the fact they could be in and out and voting in a matter of a couple minutes. After all, you just had to sign your name on the list of registered voters, and then be given a ballot with one question on it. Who do you want to be your party’s presidential nominee. There were several names to choose from and you only had to fill in the oval by the one name you wanted. Next, feed your ballot into the machine, either side up, and, bam, you were done and on your way.

The end results of the election were pretty much as everyone predicted, in Faribault County, Minnesota and across the country. It is pretty much going to be Joe Biden and Donald Trump who will end up facing each other in the November General Election.

That was pretty much a foregone conclusion, and was probably the number one reason many folks decided to skip this election last Tuesday.

I still feel that there are those on the left side of the political spectrum, and those on the right side, who strongly support their candidate. Then there are many of us, in the middle, who are having trouble supporting either one. ‘Nuff said.

Changing gears a bit, I recently read two very fascinating books. One was called ‘The Boys in the Bunkhouse’ by Dan Barry. The other was “The Stranger in the Woods’ by Michael Finkel.

Both were true stories. Both were written by newspaper reporters. Maybe I liked the books for those two reasons alone. But the stories themselves were very interesting, disturbing and fascinating all at the same time.

‘The Boys in the Bunkhouse’ is the story of a group of mentally challenged men who were kept in a bunkhouse, first in Texas and then in Iowa, and made to work at turkey processing plants.

It was hard labor, they were paid little (and most of their wages were taken to cover their room and board), and their living conditions were atrocious, to say the least. The shocking part was that this went on for decades, and it was not until 2009 that they were rescued from this life that was close to being slave labor.

It is hard to understand how this was allowed to go on for so long.

‘The Stranger in the Woods’ tells the story of Christopher Knight, who was only 20 when he decided to quit living with people and went into the woods in Maine to be by himself and lived in a tent for 27 years.

Why he did it, how he stayed hidden and how he survived the Maine winters in a tent makes for an interesting story. He was only three miles from some cabins on a lake, but was not seen by anyone, and did not talk to anyone, for nearly three decades.

What do the boys in a bunkhouse and a hermit in the woods have in common? Well, they were all pretty unaware of things going on in the country, of any news or politics, and had no knowledge of things such as who the president of the U.S. was.

They didn’t worry about much of anything, except just the basic need to figure out how to survive each day and get to the next day. I guess that pretty much sums up life in its basic form.

I don’t necessarily recommend these two books to everyone, but if you want a thought-provoking good read, these might fit the bill.

In the meantime, we can all try and get through the next eight months or so of politics, political ads and election campaigning.

Unless we decide to call it quits before then and head to the woods.