Charles Pierce: I Walked the Two Miles to City Hall to Vote, and Then I Walked the Two Miles Home

[muriel_volestrangler]

The "I Voted" sticker felt heavier this year, freighted with meaning and purpose and gravity.

It was the longest walk I had taken since St. Patrick's Day. It was the most exercise I've had since the pandemic set in. In the aquarium life I've been living since March, there have been long moments of fog-brained lassitude. Covering the most consequential national election since 1860, which was occurring simultaneously with the worst public health disaster in a century and the most explosive social-justice crisis since the cities burned in the 1960s, and doing so from a rocking chair in my living room, was often an enervating experience. I pictured myself sitting on the porch of a desert gas station, a bloodhound snoozing at my feet, and the world's traffic going by, day after day, in clouds of dust that fell on me like a shroud. Saturday broke up that grimy reverie. The day was clean and clear. Everything had a gleam to it, either from the remaining snow on the trees and bushes or from the meltwater on the streets and sidewalks. The day shone all around me. I walked faster than I thought I could. My mind and my purpose sharpened with every breath I took.

I walked for John Lewis, who never lost a step on his way to the polls, and I walked for Jaime Guttenberg and for Daniel Barden, who never got a chance to walk there.

I walked for all the people who planned to walk this November but who couldn't because of circumstances beyond their control.

I walked for my father, who did not dodge U-Boats in the North Atlantic for two years for the kind of government we've had for the last four. I walked for all the fathers in the neighborhood in which I grew up, veterans most of them, of Okinawa, and Normandy, and the Ardennes.

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a34544264/2020-election-i-walked-two-miles-to-vote/

(He was hit by a car nearly a year ago, hence the walk being a bigger thing for him that it might otherwise be)

[PSPS]

1. Pierce "writes good" LOL

I pictured myself sitting on the porch of a desert gas station, a bloodhound snoozing at my feet, and the world's traffic going by, day after day, in clouds of dust that fell on me like a shroud.

Talk about painting a picture with words!

[appalachiablue]

2. Good for Charlie Pierce, great piece.

[Judi Lynn]

3. It's good he took the time to take that walk, and to share his thoughts about it.

Good to see a picture of John Lewis, again, on the same bridge, but surrounded by conscientious, intelligent people, instead of sadistic, brutal racists.

Thanks for posting Charles Pierce's comments.

[dhill926]

4. great article....fantastic writer...