The Queue

I am standing in line with about 10,000 other people. Yes, that’s right. I bet you thought there had never been a line of 10,000 people in Maine. Couldn’t be. So did I. Here, our normal experiences include a couple of cars at the gas pump, a dozen shoppers max at the grocery store checkout on the busiest of days, a bustle of people at an arts venue or a sports event. No one stands in a line of 10,000.

But here I am, probably in the first thousand or so. I did a drive-by earlier on my way home from the gym and noticed a line forming six hours before the event was scheduled to begin. I rushed home, called my friend, and returned to queue up. The line quickly snaked down to Main Street, turned the corner, and then turned again up Buck Street, where the tail continued to grow out of my sight. The sun is shining, but the air is sharp, the sidewalk slushy underfoot, thankfully no wind.

The couple in front of me is divorced, but the ex-husband flew in from Illinois to attend this rally at the Bangor Auditorium. A good excuse to also see the college son at UMaine, to visit the old haunts, even hang out with the wife he hasn’t been with for 10 years. They’re political junkies, talking about their first political memories—his as a 6-year-old hearing Adlai Stevenson conversations around the kitchen table; hers, listening to her mechanic uncle holding forth on Ike, as he strung up the deer he shot that morning.

I am more like the girl—well, young woman, she’s 17, and will be able to vote this fall—behind me, who doesn’t come from a family that did anything more than vote. But really that’s good enough. If we all voted, just think what our voices could say. She has driven up from Portland and stands in line with only a sweatshirt, no hat, no gloves, sneakers in which the soles pull off to reveal thin socks. And boy is she happy to be here. I offer her extra boots I have in the car; she refuses but she does accept my friend’s scarf and our offer to hold her place while she warms up in the gas station on the corner.

The only thing I remember as far as political debates in my family would be Thanksgiving when Uncle Everett drank a few rum and cokes and ranted about the Democrats as gods. Both my folks were Republicans.

I am envious of these people in front of me, this woman behind me, those with early powerful political memories. I have few even recollections. I am probably the only person in America who does not remember where I was when JFK was shot. I know from others that I was a sophomore in high school, in Miss Mulcahy’s last period history class (for years I was embarrassed to admit that my radar just doesn’t register the big, cataclysmic events as more significant than the small, personal ones).

I was more of the grassroots young person who volunteered in the summer program at the housing project, looked after hundreds of kids with some friends at a big international adoption conference, or taught pliés and pirouettes at a storefront community center on Blue Hill Avenue. I never saw politics, only people.

And that’s what I see here today: people, all kinds of people with all kinds of beliefs, eager to listen. I’ll remember this day. Well, I hope I will.