TERRE HAUTE REVISITED

Well, now that we almost won Indiana….and clobbered the
the Clintons in North Carolina….I can tell you the story of my
trip to Terre Haute Indiana last week to work for
Barack Obama. Terre Haute is about sixty miles from my
home town Charleston, Illinois which I haven’t visited in
forty years…and the sounds and the smells of highways (we
called them “the slab”), the flat cornfields, all the churches
(the horizon, as you approach town looks like a cardiogram)
and the nosey middlewestern accent (just a touch of ‘y’all’)
came back in a hurry. It was exciting…..the little “Obama for
America” storefront bursting with volunteers of all sizes and
shapes and colors, buoyed up by the idea of a wonderful
candidate who showed up from the streets of Chicago, the
Serengeti of Africa and the plains of Kansas. Wow.

What happened was this. When I got there on the Friday
night before the primary, they put me to work canvassing in
a fairly fancy suburb…one of those “developments” with a
wandering street strung with ugly houses neatly placed every
twenty yards or so. I was instantly in an argument with a
guy who wanted to discuss Jeremiah Wright’s “world view”
and a sweetheart of an elderly lady who rubbed her hands
with delight and said “That Obama…. he’s one hell of a guy!”
The campaign is very well organized, I was given a sheaf of
papers with a list of names and addresses and a check-off
list; “Supporter”, “Non supporter”, “Undecided”
and “Not Home”. It started to rain and my papers got wet so
I jumped back in my rented car and I’ve got to admit I was
pretty proud of myself…suddenly out there in Indiana, 77
years old working the streets…and I wasn’t selling
vacuum cleaners.

When I got back to the office to turn in my papers,
everybody was so busy…making phone calls, assembling
canvassing kits, making buttons… that my little bout of
self-congratulation seemed silly…the whole Goddam
world had joined our army.

Saturday was even better. I was paired with a guy from
Albany, New York named Steve Quist (like me, he had
grown up in the neighborhood) and we worked what folks
called the “inner city” with its shabby houses and broken
doorframes. I met the occasional bad guy ---- one old
white dude said Barack “looked like a monkey”, and
another softly said “nigger lover” under his breath.
But most everybody else was thoughtful and forthcoming…
I worked out this corny opening…. “Hi, I’m Val Coleman with
the Obama campaign….I’ve come from Massachusetts
this morning to ask you if you plan to vote for him on
Tuesday.” Then sometimes I would stagger a little and ask
for a glass a of water. Well, what the hell…..

The stairs! Even though Terre Haute is mostly flat, most
of the front entrances are up a small flight of stairs and I was
grateful for the old broken wicker chair on the porch. I was
reminded of the opening line of Elaine Stritch’s one woman show,
“Like the prostitute says, ‘it’s not the work…it’s the stairs!’”
There were a lot of low-rise apartment houses with no elevators
that nearly did me in. One time, I climbed four flights, knocked
on the door and sank into a wicker couch. A nice looking woman
came out and looked at me and said, “I’m on my way to work…I’m
a nurse, and you don’t look too good.” Five minutes later she
assured me on her honor that she would vote for Obama.

Now Sunday was even wilder. We weren’t allowed to canvass on
Sunday morning because most folks are in church. So I asked
Mike, one of our leaders, what I should do. He said, “put on your
Obama button and go to church!” Me? Church? The old apostate?
I went.

Now this was a bigger deal than I figured. I walked into this
Catholic Church (almost a cathedral with 4 or 500 folks in the
pews) and I felt very peculiar. It had been 60 years. The
whole thing came back and landed somewhere in my neck, just
below the jaw. The altar….the stations of the cross….the stained
glass…the vestments. But it was also different…John XXIII had
changed a lot of things in my interim. People were singing!
Singing like Protestants! And everyone prayed in chorus. There
was no Latin. But the strangest moment came when everybody
took communion….including me! The priest looked at my Obama
button and grimaced….but gave me the wafer and I didn’t let it
touch my teeth when it melted in my mouth….like I’d been taught
a thousand years ago.

I went back to the office and made buttons on a button machine.

Then back to the streets, this time with a an old guy from Tennessee
named Jesse McClain. I spent the rest of the day and night knocking
on doors meeting strange and wonderful people. There was this
retired dancer from Indiana State University….82 years old and in
terrific shape. She was crazy for Obama and wanted to talk all night….
Then there was the landlord who kept yelling "Yea! McCain!" He told
me to get lost….I had a fit, lost it, and yelled at him, “Who the hell do
you think you are?"

A couple of fraternities were on my list…nice guys who I’m sure voted
for Barack….I even ran into a couple of Hillary folks…..clenched-teeth
middle-aged women who were just generally furious.

I went home on Monday…Maggie met me at the Hartford
airport. I was tired and happy.

Maggie asked me to summarize it. It was minestrone…..it
was everything at once. Bad guys, good guys, old and young….
it was the determined Obama workers, it was bad food and a
motel room that smelled like disinfectant. But it was where
I come from…with a touch of joy added because this guy just
might fix up the world.
.