American Voices….Part VI

Okay, finally….here’s my last installment of Voices from the Road.

(For those just tuning in, you can find the first five installments, gathered as I was driving from Los Angeles to northwestern Montana and back again, here, here, here, here and here)

Again, the single question I asked was: If you could ask the America’s politicians—Democrats and Republicans— to get one problem solved for this country, what issue would you pick first?

You’ll note this is a far less varied group than the others, in that four out of the six people are from Cedar City, Utah. (The fifth was an interesting homeless guy living in Las Vegas whom I met with I stopped at a city park to let my dog stretch her legs. The sixth was….well, you’ll just have to read on and find out.)

Since the preponderance of those I interviewed are from Cedar City, let me tell you a little about the place. This is Bush country. The state went 70 percent for Bush in 2004, and Cedar City is resolutely Republican. It’s also a culturally homogeneous town, population about 24,000, 92 percent white, most of those of English extraction, with a few German, Scottish and Irish bloodlines thrown in for variety. It was founded after Brigham Young sent settlers to the area in 1851 to mine the region’s coal and iron deposits. Fifty-three percent of its adults are married, and the median family income is $37,509. It is the home of Southern Utah University.

It’s a small enough city that most kids walk or ride bikes to school. And there is very little violent crime here according to the FBI. In fact, the town’s big crime incident this August was the feud between two portrait photographers that turned briefly violent when photographer Kurt Leany lobbed a rock (allegedly via slingshot) through the the window of photographer Karl Hugh. The precipitating event was when the Miss Iron County Pageant switched its business from Mr. Leany to Mr. Hugh. Mr. Leany has since apologized.

All in all, Cedar City seemed like a nice town and an excellent place to find some conservative-leaning answers to my question. Hoping for a good age mix (and also hoping to snag for myself a triple latte), I dropped into the town’s Starbucks where nearly everyone in the place was eager to talk. I randomly picked four—two Starbucks workers, and two customers.

To a person, they wanted to talk about Iraq (In one case, the economy was thrown in as well.) Three of them had relatives in country or about to go. Their answers were poignant, and more emotional than you’ll get simply from the printed words. Some of them stuttered as they talked, their expressions suddenly stricken. It wasn’t that they weren’t articulate. These were people who genuinely wanted to answer the question. But, once into the subject, they seemed to find themselves at a loss about what they could reasonably wish for in order to fix the situation.

And no one-—no one—sounded confident that their leaders knew what to do.

Okay, enough of my nattering. Here are their words:

Nancy, 44, lives in Cedar City, works part time at Starbucks, the rest of the time stays home with her kids. She said: For me it’s the whole war. My husband’s very, very Republican and I’m independent. So, I understand the pros. My godson just enlisted and he went off to Germany so I support the whole war in that way. If you pull out of Iraq, that’s a bad thing, and if you stay, that’s a bad thing. So there is no answer. But I wish they’d do something.

Ryan, 24, lives in Cedar City, also works part time at Starbucks, then he runs the office portion of his dad’s air conditioning company. He said: Personally the Iraq situation. The war. I have a brother-in-law in the Marine Corps who’s in Iraq right now. I can’t really say what I’d have them do personally, It’s not my place.. But I’d like to see some resolution. I feel it’s important to be over there and nice to help, but…..it’d be nice to have some kind of answer.


Linda, 57, a retired nurse, also from Cedar City, runs a seasonal fast food restaurant with her husband. She said: The war. Because I’ve got sons that are involved….I have one that’s in the army. He’s up in Alaska right now and it’s questionable whether he’s going to go to Iraq again or someplace else. I would like to have that solved. I would hope that we should stay there ‘till it’s politically….. I don’t think the Sunnis and the Shites will ever get together….Democracy is what I’d like. I’d like us to leave with our heads held high. My son one son has PX and he was almost killed as a civilian over there. I don’t want them to have put their lives on the line and have it be for nothing.


Diana, 57, (Linda’s neighbor) a retired product manager for a software company. She said: The war….And our economy. Our economy’s awful. The country’s in such debt right now. Two terms ago, the country was in the black for the first time in a long time. I feel like we’re on a sinking ship almost. We need to focus on the United States and regroup, and get our act together.

Richard, 53, out of work graphic artist, homeless, living in Las Vegas. He said: I think I’d have them focus on everyone having a job so they could take care of themselves. A lot of people like me need retraining. Like if I was retrained in computer ‘graphics, I know I could get work. I’m smart and good at what I do, and I want to work. But I don’t have the money to get retrained. I know there’s a lot of work out there. But after two heart attacks, there’s some kind of manual labor I can’t do. My last job was working full time for WalMart, but I couldn’t save enough money to put first and last on an apartment, and I couldn’t qualify for a car loan on what I made. Even full time, they don’t pay you enough. So job retraining, yeah, that’s what I’d choose.


Carlos, 50, lives in Los Angeles and washes car windows for a living. He’s been physically disabled since birth. (My observation, not his.) I don’t know if he has a home. I don’t know if he is here legally. He said:
Nothing. I like everything in the United States of America.