This week will feature a three-part guest post by the witty and delightful Rory Leahy. He is, in his own words, “a Chicago writer, actor, producer, raconteur, occasional shiftless layabout and Artistic Director of American Demigods, a theatre company whose next production will be Erratica: An Academic Farce, running from April 21st through May 14th at Second Stage Theater.” He’s also a road warrior of the most terrifying kind; he kills cars and stealthily blames it on the alternator. Observe:
Part I, In Which Our Hero And His Companion Singlehandedly Change The Course Of American History
It’s appropriate that I come to the good Lisa Findley’s blog to tell this tale, or rather tales. For this is a blog mostly about travel that also dips into passionately felt left wing views. This story is, in a broad sense, a little bit about how these two can intersect, and how uncomfortable it can feel when one ventures outside one’s geopolitical bubble. Mostly though, it’s about misfortune. And the kind of disasters that can befall a well intentioned soul through no fault of his own because the gods are cruel. That well intentioned soul being me. In the past two years, I have embarked on a handful of cross country road trips. Three of them, which probably constitutes the majority of a handful, have been the death voyages of the automobiles I was traveling in. Three times, in two years, the vehicles ceased to function, forever, with me in them, as either a driver or a passenger.
One begins to take it personally.
November, 2008: Barack Obama is about to be elected President of the United States. This is personal for me, and honestly, kind of surreal. I first met Obama almost six years earlier, when he was an unknown state senator taking the big shot blah blah blah. He was a long shot at the time, but his charisma was overwhelming. My girlfriend at the time tells me that I told her “Take a good look, cuz this guy’s gonna be the first black president” back in 2003. You can ask her if you don’t believe me. She’s from Oregon. Oregonians don’t lie. Anyway, I may have believed that but I had no idea it would be so soon. I’d fallen out of regular political activism by 08, but my best friend from high school, Marc wanted to be part of the final assault. He proposed that we take a trip to Indiana, our nearest swing state, on Election Day and help get out the vote. So we got in his girlfriend’s generously loaned car and we pointed it southeast.
Whatever disappointments folks have felt since, there was an amazing feeling in the air that day. The Bush/Cheney empire was about to fall. We were gonna rock this thing Battle of Endor style. Then we were gonna go back to Chicago that night and celebrate with friends like dancing Ewoks. I have to confess that’s the part I was looking forward to most, the social part. That’s just the kind of party animal I am. Marc was a bit more idealistic I think, wanting to do his part. I already felt like I’d done my bit for the cause and was resting smugly on my laurels, but I was happy for a day off work and a road trip anyway.
On the two hour plus journey, Marc and I played one of our favorite games, mocking right wing rhetoric, gleeful at the impending triumph of Islamo-Communist revolution.
“I can’t wait for Christianity to be outlawed!”
“I know, that’s going to rock!”
“I hate America so much, you have no idea.”
“No I totally do, because I am also a liberal and wish to see our way of life destroyed. How long do you think it will take to build the gulags?”
“I’m thinking maybe 90 days max. The genius of it is, the patriotic Americans will be building their own prisons, it’s very efficient.”
“We’re going to execute the entire Bush family, like the Romanovs, right?”
“Oh yeah, for the next hundred years there will be legends that like, Jenna somehow survived but no one will be able to prove it.”
“I’m assuming Cheney is Rasputin then?”
“Oh definitely, he’s gonna be shot, stabbed, poisoned, drowned and finally beheaded…”
“But he’ll keep coming back.”
While we were joking outlandishly I’d like to point out that a lot of what we said turned out to be true, at least metaphorically.
We reported to the campaign office, an auto workers union shop on the outskirts of Indiana, and were given our assigned addresses. These were the addresses of registered Democrats. Our job was to knock on their doors and make sure they went and voted. If they were elderly or disabled, our job was to call the office and make sure they got rides to the polls. There were always dangers in this sort of work. They were registered Democrats according to the best information but no information is perfect, and you never know when you’re walking into hostile territory. And on a couple of occasions we did. One gentleman held his nose and waved his hand in a “PU” gesture saying “Obama? You’re gonna be sorry four years from now!”
Maybe but probably not for the reasons you think.
Then there was the dog. We find ourselves in a somewhat rundown neighborhood where a mangy cur is just wandering the streets alone. When he sees us he starts growling and barking at us menacingly. This is a bit scary. We immediately retreat, walking slowly like you’re supposed to do. But the dog keeps following us and growling, just a few inches behind us.
“I’m going to kick you in the head.” Marc warns, to no apparent effect. Both of us are pretty sure we can take this flea infested asshole but we don’t really want to have to. After what must be a block, the beast finally gives up his pursuit and turns around.
Fucking Republican dog.
But for the most part, our canvassing was uneventful, people told us they voted or were going to, we gave them directions. In three cases, we met up with people who needed rides to the polls. We called headquarters to arrange it. So that was three people who were going to vote that otherwise would not have. We were determined to win this state, and would credit ourselves with the victory.
At last the time came to head home. Grant Park. Dancing in the streets. Great moment in history. Ewoks. This was gonna be good.
Maybe 20 minutes out of Indianapolis we notice billows of smoke coming out of the engine. This is not happening. Because it’s. Just. Not. We apparently had an overheated engine. We pulled into a gas station and purchased large quantities of coolant fluid. Which seemed to work. For a few minutes. Then it started again. Marc and I were humanities dorks who knew nothing about cars. We desperately tried to figure out what to do. These desperate attempts yielded no appreciable results.
The car came to a dead, sputtering stop as Marc pulled it over on the shoulder of the highway. Next to a cornfield. I did what any responsible 21st century adult does in a situation like this. I called my dad. He doesn’t really know much about cars either but a fair sight more than us. My dad spoke to Marc briefly. He said, optimistically, that it might be the alternator. We called 911, and waited for a deputy to come meet us. The deputy would make a report and put us in touch with a tow truck. Marc wanted to call his girlfriend Kelli, the owner of the car, to inform her of what had transpired. He asked me to leave the car for a moment so they could have a bit of privacy, which was understandable, but vexing on a midwestern November’s night.
“Sure guv’nor,” I grumbled, “Just throw old Rory to the elements, he doesn’t mind a bit.”
I turned away from the car and my eyes fixed on what was in front of them. Corn. Rows upon rows upon rows of corn. Or maybe they were soybeans. Like I can tell the difference.
The evening grew later. It was past 7 now. People were texting me. Results were coming in. This was not how I wanted to get the news of victory at all. I listened to Marc negotiate with the tow company on the phone. Initially, we clung to desperate hope that we would reach home that night, a hope reflected in the defiant tone of Marc’s initial round of negotiations.
“I need my car towed with me in it to Chicago. Tonight. I don’t care how much it’s going to cost. Wait….how much is it going to cost?” We conceded to cruel fate that we weren’t gonna get home that night and agreed to be driven to a motel and drop the car off at an auto shop in the hope of its eventual repair. We would celebrate our victory in an unfamiliar and probably hostile land. There would be no Ewoks.
It’s possible that a couple of obscure X-Wing pilots might have suffered engine failure and gotten lost after the Battle of Endor, thus having to spend the night in a motel and miss the party, but there’s a reason Return of the Jedi did not focus on those characters.
After a seemingly interminable wait, the tow truck arrived; we were pretty excited to see it. The driver, I am happy to say, a very friendly sort. Young, perhaps a couple of years our junior. He had a shaved head and a big, bushy beard. He expressed his condolences for our plight and we talked about that. It’s sort of hard for a political junkie like me to comprehend that people are capable of talking about anything else on the night of a presidential election, but I was relieved that he did not ask us what a couple of Chicago boys were doing getting stranded on a rural Indiana highway, and we did not allude to it. As John Cleese so memorably admonished: “Don’t mention the war.”
My goalposts for the evening had obviously moved. We weren’t gonna make it home for the party, but I wanted to get the big news from a TV in a warm room. A text informed me that we’d won Ohio, which pretty much sealed the deal. The final word though… Marc later chided me, rightfully so, for my rather self-centered attitude. A bad night would have been a night in which Obama lost.
I was happy that we found ourselves ensconced in a motel room ahead of said final word and we immediately flipped on the TV, and for the first time in hours, recovered some enthusiasm. Eventually, we got the official word we’d been waiting for. A solemn anchor confirmed in a solemn anchor voice that Barack Hussein Obama had been elected President of the United States on the historic night of November 4th, 2008. Marc and I jumped up on our respective motel beds and gave each other a high ten, at which point we collapsed back into those respective beds. We were damn proud of the bit of work we did, and while we haven’t gotten our hoped for liberal paradise two years later at least we beat Dr. Strangelove and Serena Joy.
We watched Obama’s acceptance speech at Grant Park, the event we couldn’t make it to. At one point during his speech he thanked all the people who couldn’t make it, but who had worked so hard, making phone calls and knocking on doors because they wanted to improve the direction of their nation.
“That was us, you know.”
“Damn right it was.”
The state of Indiana went for Obama. By a 1% margin. Despite our misfortune, and despite the fact that poor Kelli’s car never was repaired, Marc and I slept the sleep of the just…
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