A Past Life

As I’m writing this, Michael is watching the movie The Sentinel on television. Every few minutes he leans over and asks, Do the Secret Service really do that? And I nod. Yep, mostly. Bit less cleavage, Eva Longoria, and fewer one-liners, Keifer Sutherland, but yes, mostly.

Are you wondering why he’s asking me? In a past life, I worked as motorcade advance for a presidential candidate. I even spent so much time with Secret Service agents, waiting outside events for our motorcade to roll out, that I thought I wanted to be one.

{every 5 days this was my view. image from here.}

There were flaws in that plan, of course. I cared who won. They’re not fond of that. You do have to wear boring suits and sensible shoes. You spend your life traveling from one city to another, following a game that’s never ending. And those guns. Big, big guns.

I’ve been re-living campaign memories often lately. President Obama is headed our way in May and it’s a constant topic in the news. Today, State Department officials descended on the tiny town of Moneygall and I’d say the excitement is palpable in their neck of the woods.

I never worked for a president. My job was preparing the motorcade for Senator John Kerry, but I remember the buzz of an impending visit. I’ve found myself lost in a bit of reverie this week, reliving those buzzy moments in my head.

{image from here}

In West Virginia, we were so far into the Appalachian Mountains that our cell phones wouldn’t work and we had to use radios. I stood high up on the side of a hill and painted giant plywood letters that spelled out KERRY. They were our backdrop, from 500 yards away.

In New York City, Senator Kerry visited the same weekend as President Bush and the entire UN delegation. The traffic was so thick, Senator Kerry hopped out of the tinted black suburban and walked down the sidewalk to his next event.

In Columbus, Ohio, at an outdoor rally with 40,000 people, the generators blew and Bruce Springsteen played acoustic while the union volunteers scrambled to fix them. Senator Kerry waited back stage, two days before the election, pensive, solemn, while 40,000 people screamed and cheered in the dark.

{image from here}

Before he even qualified for Secret Service protection, in Portland, Maine, I sat in the driver’s seat of a Ford minivan while Senator Kerry sat in the passenger seat, his long legs folded up against the dash. We drove to the venue; he remarked that a passing river reminded him of his time in Vietnam.

And in Boston, I stood on the floor of the Democratic National Convention and listened to Senator Barack Obama give the speech that propelled him, fast and furious, toward the presidency.

I’ve been living in those memories lately, lost in the tangible feeling of history being made. If I close my eyes I ache with that buzzy excitement that’s going to land in Moneygall next month.

So soak it in, lads, you’ll feel it for years.