Not Your Usual Phone Call

Yes, I did change the title to Misc Ramblings........

When the phone rings at Etcetera after hours it is usually "Are you all open?" or a phone survey.  Imagine my surprise when the phone rang Monday night.  "Etcetera Coffeehouse.....this is Allan Rhodes." Then,  "Hi, this is Jason calling for the Huffington Post......"

Really, the Huffington Post?  The interview was this afternoon. The subject was Senator Mitch McConnell and the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant.  I thought I would bore you with a bit of the conversation with Jason.

Basically, I shared that as the second most powerful person in the Senate, I was hopeful that McConnell could help the progress to get DOE approval for GE/Hitachi and/or do a full cleanup as in Oak Ridge.  I expressed the fear that as McConnell's number one goal was to defeat Mr. Obama this probably did not endear him to the Administration.  Also, as our Senator I feel his real mission is to serve his electorate.  Isn't there that understanding that I vote for you, though maybe I don't want to, so when something really bad happens you will have my back?  Anyway, you get the idea of the thing.

I don't think I was mean-spirited toward our Senator, but there are moments when I wonder, does he have our backs?   Or is life on the national stage just really sweet?

It has been an afternoon.

Allan

How I Got Here... Memories of the Campaign Trail

Well, here I am on the cusp of six months served as a city commissioner. Now that I’ve had some “seasoning,” I thought I could, from time to time, write a little blog post about my experiences and thoughts. I’ve never had a blog before… but I’ve never been a city commissioner before, either.

First things first. How did I get into this gig? Well, while you all were enjoying last year’s spring, summer, and fall, I was knocking on doors. 881 doors, to be exact. That was the whole campaign plan! Okay, I knew enough from my old days running a car dealership to do some billboard advertising, but knocking on doors and talking to people face to face would carry the real load. I met some pretty memorable people behind those doors. Here are a few:

A man named Robert was the first person to open his door and find me standing there. To my great encouragement, he wished me well, and when I saw him during the 8^th of August parade, I just had to leave the parade line so I could run up to his porch and thank him for his support.

In the River Oaks neighborhood, a lady asked me if I was a Republican or a Democrat. I thought, “Huh? It’s a non-partisan race we’re running here,” but said that I was a Democrat. She said that Democrats were “ruining the country.” I told her that I wasn’t after the country… I was just trying to get elected to the city commission! In all fairness, she did later apologize for giving me a rough time, and after we talked at length, she said she’d support me.

One afternoon in the neighborhood by Morgan Elementary, I was invited in for hot tea and conversation by a delightful woman who raised cockatiels and happened to be from upstate New York.

Another day, at my first stop on an afternoon of campaigning, I was asked if I was a Socialist. I was a bit taken aback—actually, I was floored. Once I collected myself, I managed to say though I believed that, in the words of Lincoln, “government can do for us what the individual cannot” I certainly wasn’t a Socialist.

Later that same day, I had just finished planting a sign in a man’s yard when he said, “Wait, one more question first.” When I answered, he told me to take my sign back. My crime? I had told him that I’d be voting for Mr. Obama. He said he’d support me… but apparently he didn’t want word getting around, so no yard sign.

In Littleville, I talked with a man and discovered that he had worked at my family’s car dealership years before and now runs a successful trucking company. With all the shared history, we had quite a visit.

I met a man mowing his lawn on Martin Luther King Drive, who asked me the now-familiar question, “Are you a Republican or a Democrat?” “Again?” I thought. When I answered that I was a Democrat, he said, “Great! I’ll vote for you!” Whew!

One particularly hot September afternoon as I walked up a driveway, a lady with a beer in hand said, “Nobody running for anything has ever come around this neighborhood before. My question is-- what do you plan to do for poor people?” “I guess I haven’t thought about it quite like that,” I said, “but I’m here in your neighborhood, aren’t I?” She nodded, satisfied with my answer.

Each day as I headed out to a different neighborhood, I dreaded the thought of approaching all those doors. Funny thing was, as much as I hated interrupting so many people’s afternoons to ask for their support, I loved sharing stories of who I had met that day with my wife Johanna during dinner even more. (And she loves this blog idea I have, because now her ears can get a break!)

I’ll try to stick to current events in my next post, but a little lighthearted history makes for a pretty good start.

Over and out,

Allan