I grew up in northeast Oklahoma, about 65 miles east of where Yvsa lives. I remember one of our more memorable county commissioner races...
The incumbent and the challenger didn't have much use for one another, and got into a heated argument one day. The challenger was sitting in his pickup truck, and the incumbent was standing right outside it, yelling through the window.
Tempers flared to the point that the incumbent, feeling that words alone could no longer fully express the intensity of his feelings, reached down and picked up a flint rock about the size of a grapefruit that he felt would enable him to more eloquently make his point. This was not a wise move, tactically speaking, because his political opponent had his old sixgun with him.
Before said incumbent could bounce the rock off his head, the man in the truck (who was an old coon hunting buddy of mine, by the way) promptly shot him in the elbow, spoiling his aim, and incidentally, spoiling his arm also.
There was a little flap over it, but nothing much ever came of the shooting as it was considered self-defense. You'd have a hard time finding a jury member in Oklahoma, at least that part of Oklahoma, who hasn't either been hit by a rock , or knows someone who has, and we are a sympathetic culture.
In the election, we elected the challenger by a strong margin, on the logic that anybody dumb enough to pack a rock to a gunfight is too dumb to grade our roads. Now I had nothing against the rock-throwing incumbent...he was a friend of my granddads and let me hunt on his ranch. But we were a politically savvy bunch of people, and had certain standards we demanded in our elected officials.
