Thu Oct 30, 2014, 10:00 PM http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025738464
struggle4progress (80,194 posts)
I knocked a hundred forty doors today, bringing my weekly total to about six hundred.Maybe if I plop here a while, I'll feel tired. But right now I'm so psyched I can barely sit still. If the sun were still up, I think I could walk a few hours more.
It was a good day, and I had a lot of fun talking to people. Only four or five weren't friendly; and I found it easy to reply nicely to them as I moved along. One woman told me, I'm not voting this year because I don't like either candidate! I suppose I could have told her that her ballot lists about fifty different people running in about twenty separate races but I actually just wished her a nice day.
I met parents with babes in arms.
A retired black man heckled me mercilessly, then patted my arm and told me of course he was voting for my candidate.
While I was chatting with his older sister, an elementary school child, aged seven or eight craned his neck to read the name of the Senator I'm hoping to re-elect and then spontaneously cheered my candidate.
An older man, who had recently moved to this town, in a rundown house in an older neighborhood, had already carefully researched where to vote.
I met transplants from Africa and Asia and other parts of the Americas, that we here often forget when we speak of America.
I met a grandmother, who said she has never missed an election, and who lives next door to her grand-daughter who has never missed an election.
I'd ring doorbells, and people I'd just met would call from two houses away, "They're not home!" That saves me a half-minute a door whenever it happens; and it adds up
I met a blind man, who wanted to know if I could find him a ride to the polls, got his phone number, and passed it along. I didn't promise him anything, but I got a winning smile and a thank you. People who looked like stereotypical street thugs from some cheap thriller said thanks. A man sitting in his car asked for a copy of the door hanger, so I ran through my spiel with him, and he said thanks. I heard it so often it almost blended with the background noise of those streets: I might hear it in my memory whenever I pass through there again.
600 doors, 5 minutes a door, 3 minutes to walk to next house plus knocking... 4800 minutes... 80 hours... 11.42 minutes a day for the last seven days... no breaks for lunch or supper no transport time...
I have a hard time buying that.
madamesilverspurs (8,344 posts)
8. Thanks for all those doors!
Not something I can do, I can barely make it to the other side of the room and back. Some of our walkers come back with wild stories now and then. I mostly do office tasks, also the data entry for canvassing and phone banks.
Yesterday I got a list of seniors to call. It went okay, but there's always at least one grump. This time it was a seventy-something man who mostly grumbled and growled, and after I told him which candidate I was supporting he said "I already voted for him! Who the hell else WOULD I vote for?!" And then he hung up.
yeah... sure.
struggle4progress (80,194 posts)
17. They aren't my stories: they're the stories of ordinary people being themselves
in the brief instant that I happen to meet them
mopinko (42,567 posts)
29. i fear my traveling days are numbered.
getting a divorce, leaving the big paycheck behind.
unless i end up on the lecture circuit, i dont think i will be able to visit again.
but, who knows.
remember, its always about me me me....
mopinko (42,567 posts)
36. yeah, me too. but this too shall pass. in the meantime
i am headed up to wisconsin tomorrow to work for du'er kelly westlund.
it will be nice to get away from my current life.
Response to moondust (Reply #43)
Fri Oct 31, 2014, 12:21 AM
struggle4progress (80,194 posts)
45. A Change Is Gonna Come
her last post is at 12.21 AM...
Don't think she'll be getting an early start on the knocking of the doors...
