Well, actually, it wasn't St. Louis, it was the suburb of St. Charles. And it didn't happen to me, it happened to a friend of mine. So you're getting this second (third?) hand.
Once upon a time...
My friend and her partner, both in their sixties, went to the river side park in downtown St. Charles to hand out stickers for John Kerry. Now, St. Charles is about the most venomously Rebulican place in Missouri short of Ashcroftonia (also known as Springfield), but there are a few sturdy Democrats who live under the shadow of Republicanism.
And some of those Democrats were around that morning, because in pretty short order, many people stopped by to get stickers. But the eye of the elephant is ever vigalent. Soon enough, a Republican appeared, with a park ranger in tow. The two Kerry supporters were told that they could not sell stickers in the park. When they explained that they were giving the stickers away and not selling them, the Republican continued to argue that they couldn't do it in the park. However, about that time, a lawyer happened by, listened to both sides, and assured the park ranger that they could indeed distribute literature in the park. The ranger agreed, and the eye of Mordor, uh, the elephant, retreated.
The retreat didn't last long. Within a few minutes, three Republicans wearing Bush buttons appeared. They heckled the valiant sticker distributors and made fun of the people who stopped for stickers. When that didn't work, they tried standing three abreast to block the sidewalk. People went around them to get stickers.
This angered the Republicans greatly. One of the three produced a cell phone and made a call. Shortly, there were a dozen button-wearing Bush supporters surrounding the sticker givers. They blocked all the sidewalks, and generally made the people coming by feel as welcome as a woman on her way to an abortion clinic. They also tried to get park officials to run off the sticker folks, claiming that they were selling the stickers when the ranger wasn't looking. The ranger refused to play their game and people kept coming for the stickers.
The Republican crowd was reduced to glaring at the Kerry supporters as, like Excalibur from the stone, the last sticker was pulled from the box and handed out. The two stalwart defenders of truth, justice, and the right to hand out stickers in a public place, strolled out of the park with a dozen pairs of Republican eyeballs burning holes in their backs.
A happy ending? We won't know that for another two weeks.