I am so glad I put up my Obama/Biden yard sign.

lazyriver

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Tue Oct-14-08 10:36 AM
Original message

I am so glad I put up my Obama/Biden yard sign.

I got back from the local farmer's market Saturday feeling pretty happy about the morning's events. I stopped at the market to get my usual vegetables, eggs, and local meats but was thrilled to see one of the vegetable vendors handing out free Obama/Biden and Tom Allen signs. He had a huge stack when I first walked by but it was more than half gone when I stopped at his stand ten minutes later. Everybody seemed thrilled to get a free sign. I got one of each along with my mixed greens, carrots and garlic then rushed home to put them up. I was looking forward to being the first on my road to display them since the only yards with sign on the seven miles of my road are all for McPalin. I figured the signs would get pulled up in a day or so, but now I knew where to get more if needed.

I took the groceries in the house and giddily jogged back out to put up my signs. As I walked out to the roadside, I saw my neighbor from across and up the road standing back and admiring the brand new Obama/Biden sign he just stuck in the ground. I told him it looked damned good and held up the signs I was about to put up.

A little background here: I live in very rural Maine. It is a pretty red section of an otherwise blue-purple state. There are lots of god fearin', gun lovin', book hatin' rednecks in this area. I've lived in this house for about eight years and have spoken to only one of the five neighbors within sight of my house (each at least 100 yards and the farthest 1/4 mile away). This same neighbor has lived there for 28 years and has spoken to the other neighbors only a handful of times. It's an area where people keep to themselves and mind their own business not out of unfriendliness but out of respect for privacy. It's weird but it's also why we live here.

So it was a strange and new experience to have this spontaneous discussion with my neighbor. I invited him over for a cup of coffee and we talked politics for an hour. He is a committed Democrat like me and is equally committed to energy independence. He and his wife are passionate about it. They burn wood as their primary heat source, have a huge garden and hunt much like my wife and me but he is also in the process of installing solar panels on the roofs of his house and barn. In addition, he's putting up a wind turbine that a college professor friend of his designed to help power his house. We discovered eccentricity and progressive ideals are two things we have in common as well as a healthy love for the Grateful Dead, home brewed beer and a growing interest in archery & bow hunting. I offered to help him on his solar and wind projects as well as teach him some of the finer points about archery. He offered to teach me about powering my own house in a similar fashion and will introduce me to his friend that designed his turbine system.

We walked back over to his house and checked out his solar panels and admired our yard signs again. We bet each other a home brew that the others sign would be taken down or defaced first and then he showed me the stack of 50 more he said he was going to put up all along his road frontage if and when his disappears. He said I'm welcome to half if my sign goes down. Yeah, I like the way this guy thinks. It's safe to say a pretty cool friendship was forged on Saturday morning.