Sun 24 August 2008
And though she lives in Scranton, Pennsylvania / She never eats...bananas
thirty-seven
"Ladies and gentlemen, if your kitchen table is like mine, you sit there at night after you've put the kids to bed and you talk about what you need, you talk about how much you're worried about being able to pay the bills. Well, ladies and gentleman, that's not a worry John McCain will have to worry about... He'll have to figure out which of his seven kitchen tables to sit at." -- Joe Biden, Aug. 23, 2008, Springfield, Ill.
GARY, Ind. — I'm following the Obama campaign again, this time as a journalist, at least one aiming for the alternative press. I want to capture the tales of this beleagured city, the blackest city in America over 100,000. Indiana has a chance to go Democratic this year. The Obama campaign is going all-out, especially here. I'm following the volunteers around, women in their 60s and 70s, some of whom grew up in the Jim Crow South. "That's why we're such sticklers for voting — because for a long time we couldn't. That should've been our rights as Americans. We paid a price for this even though we shouldn't've had to, but we did," said P.J. Gray, an apparent cousin.
I am at Bennigan's, just about the only new business, or even commercially viable one in this stretch of Gary. The campaign headquarters across the street shares a building with a nail salon. The crumbling sidewalk is covered in glass. Next door is a busted out old hotel, seven stories of former glory, now not a pane unshattered.
Biden came on the T.V. here, the scrappy mouth of the working class, née Scranton, Pa., (which is also the inspiration for a Harry Chapin song, q.v.) His sleeves rolled, he came hitting at McCain and made a typical goof referring to "Barack America." The son of a used car salesman, he was first elected to the Senate at the age of 29 in 1972. His wife died in a car accident shortly thereafter and every day he took the train from Washington to Wilmington, Del., to raise his two sons, who survived the crash. Born not of money, and spending most of his life in public service, he has called himself "the poorest man in the Senate." But only when one is talking money.
I'm really beginning to love my Rogers Park neighborhood in Chicago. The other day I was walking down Greenview Avenue, south of Touhy, and this black man spoke to me from the Presbyterian church steps: "Where's your bike, man?" You see, every day, I ride north on Greenview from Lunt to the very end of Chicago, a mile or two north, then cut over to Sheridan Road and ride along Lake Michigan. Every day, I pass this church in my cherry red cruiser. And, y'know, he noticed me. I exist. I am his neighbor.
I answered back, "Oh, I still have it, back that a-way. I'm just walking today." And he said, "Nice bike, man, real nice bike."
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