Living in a battleground state can be interesting to say the least. Living in a small town with a university and a nearby major military installation in that battleground state makes it even more interesting.
John Kerry and John Edwards came through on the train in August. dubya did his high speed bus tour through downtown last week (as one local attorney pointed out, "They broke the speed limit driving down Holden Street.").
We've had our phone bank up and running since the end of August for continual rounds of voter ID calls. Our headquarters has a good location downtown and is constantly staffed. In my memory this is the best volunteer turnout I've ever seen this far out for any presidential election year. We can't keep stocked with campaign buttons, bumper stickers and yard signs.
During the lunch hour today I manned the front table at headquarters with a number of other volunteers. Our building is a storefront on a busy corner. We keep the front door open to encourage walk-ins and we always have a steady stream of people coming in to pick up materials and chat.
Several of us were laughing with a group of our older volunteers (all in their late 60s and early 70s) who described their previous evening's adventure putting up 4 by 8 campaign signs at locations around town. They had 30 six foot fence posts, a post driver, and a lot of cable ties to fix the signs to the posts. One of them commented on the packed ground at one location (we haven't had rain in a while) and said, "Driving those posts like'd killed us..."
As we continued our conversation an individual walked into headquarters in uniform (camouflage BDUs, a black beret, and NCO's stripes - I'm not current on rank insignia). We all looked up - he appeared to me as if he had thought long and hard before walking in. He asked, "Do you have any bumper stickers and buttons?" Someone handed him several Kerry/Edwards bumper stickers. We had just run out of our headquarters stock of buttons - I reached into my bag and handed him two of my Kerry/Edwards buttons. Another volunteer (the spouse of a "Veteran for Kerry") took off her Kerry/Erwards lapel pin and handed it to him.
He spoke a while with our group. One couple talked with him about their oldest son who had been called to active duty. At one point he said, "There are a lot more like me than people think."
He told us he had just come from a local Guard unit's activation ceremony. We understood that those individuals would be added to another state's unit which will be deployed.
The local party charges cost for materials so we can restock. Not one of us asked him for a donation. It was the least we could do.
You can be sure several individuals opened their own wallets and dropped some money into the kitty.