I woke up at 5:00 this morning, hours earlier than usual. Something had awakened me, and after a quick check, I determined that it was not Webster, groaning because he had to go outside. No, Webster was unconscious, at my feet. But something was making unwonted noise.
Couldn't get back to sleep, so I got up and checked my e-mail; no, no one had sent me anything since 11 PM last night. Except for Barack; I am definitely on his list. I scrapped that one, as usual, without reading it --do you suppose that was a mistake? Will those pixels be worth something someday? serves me right for sending him a couple of contributions.
The papers came. When I opened the front door to collect them, I knew what the noise was. There was a helicopter hovering over my house. Outdoors, it was quite noisy; it seemed to be about 500 feet overhead, but surely they can't do that, can they? Just hover there, that low? It hung there. I looked up and down the block, and in the park at the end of the street I saw 2 TV sound trucks and a police car parked so as to block the path into the park.
Well, Webster and Dickens need their walk; Congressman Doyle is just another fire hydrant to them. So we headed towards the park; there's a particular lamppost down there that would surely wither but for Webster's personal watering. I walked fifty feet or so, and realized that Shoesmith School, in the park, where I vote, was also the place where the Obamas vote. That explained the helicopters --turned out there were two of them, and the sound trucks --I counted five, surrounding the park on the 49th, 50th, and Dorchester sides.
There was yellow crime-scene tape roping off most of the baseball diamond closest to the school gymnasium entrance, where the voting booths are always set up. Twenty or so cops were scattered in ones and twos all over the park. A woman ran straight across the park, from 49th street towards Bill Ayers's house on 50th (see? we must be important here! We even have our own terrorists, including Bill's wife Bernadine, whose sister dated David Brighton our first year), with a guy following her carrying one of those industrial strength cameras with the enormous lens. The usual 3 or 4 dog walkers and their pooches were there, too, looking a little lost, though all the dogs obviously loved the excitement. Two or 3 SUVs and a couple of black sedans had pulled up onto the grass, a big no-no, and were being guarded by guys with wires in their ears.
I realized where I had seen this before: this was a Verizon commercial, the one where the nerdy guy says he has his network, and steps aside to reveal 300 or 400 people, some just standing, some on bikes, one or two swinging in from cables attached to cranes somewhere overhead. I was suddenly glad I had voted ten days earlier, after waiting 45 minutes in a very friendly line at the community center at 43rd & Cottage. All this celebrity rubber-necking is exciting, for about 5 minutes. Then you realize that when the Great Man comes in, if you're inside, you stay inside, until after he has gone; no matter if you're ready to leave. And things like that. Wonderful to see Bill Clinton up close, until you realize you are hopelessly stuck in a line of cars of 59th street when all you wanted to do was drop off your kid at Lab and beat it downtown to the meeting you will now miss.
The dogs pooped; I picked it up like the citizen I am (besides, who knows but that I'd be on the news, letting my dogs poop on ground suddenly hallowed?), tossed it into the waste bin and turned back up Kenwood the way we had come, waving as always to the woman with the dog so well-behaved that it's never even on a leash, as she strolled ten feet in front of her dog, smoking a placid cigarette. I think she shares the dogs' opinion of Congressman Doyle.
Obama's not in Kansas anymore. And tonight on returning home in my tux (still fits, barely!) from a formal election party down on 57th, I could hear another helicopter overhead. Still, I doubt if the country's going to experience any sudden Hyde Park-ization. Although there is a lot of excitement, of course, about Obama here, at least ten percent of the population in this neighborhood thinks he's too conservative, me included. I just hope that, unlike Jackson Hole when Cheney's there (as my daughter Jessica informs me), our cell phones won't stop working every time Barack comes home to clear brush or something at the Greenwood Avenue White House. And I hope I can get used to those helicopters.
And what an amazing night! The scene in Grant Park, after the speech, with the Biden and Obama extended families mingling, was enough to make me wonder if, at last, I was seeing the beginning of America.
PS. In Memoriam: Studs Terkel, dead on Friday at age 96.
