Two memories from the fall of 1980 that I find myself turning to a lot of late.

At first, they don't seem connected to each other, but I think they are.

In the fall of 1980, I was a college sophomore two states away from home. The second of the presidential debates was to be held in Cleveland, in the area where I'm from, which made it of especial interest to me. But it was of interest to all of my friends as well, because we were all 18 or older at that time and it was going to be the first presidential election we were eligible to vote in, so we ate up all the information we could on it. In those days, as some will recall, TVs were expensive and not everybody had one in their dorm room and not even every dorm lounge had one, so if you knew someone who had a TV in their room, a whole lot of people would cram into that room to watch an event like a presidential debate. Such was the scene in the dorm room of a TV-owning friend of mine where I watched the debate of October 28, 1980.

Most of the people in that room were more liberally or Democratically inclined, but one was a Republican, or at least a big Reagan fan. I still recall how he sat there cheering for everything Reagan said (the "Here you go again" line being the big one of the night) while decrying everything Carter said. I was more inclined to go a different way altogether--yeah, I ended up voting for Anderson--but one thing I knew for sure, I didn't want Reagan. Yet I recall very clearly my feelings that night: that whether I wanted Reagan or not, it was Reagan I was going to get. That even though the Reagan fan in our midst was in the minority, it was he, and millions of other people thinking like him, who were going to win the election and win the day--not people who thought like me or most of my friends. (The only thing I didn't foresee is that they would win over political thought in this country for the next 28 years. And it's a good thing I didn't, or I might have been inclined to do something not so nice to myself.)

I remember having this distinct feeling of being on the outside looking in, of being the only person in a large room of people (beyond that dorm room, I mean) who didn't think "There you go again" was funny, who wasn't impressed by Reagan's folksiness or pseudo-populism--one of only a small handful of people not being taken in by a medicine show. And feeling very lonely because of it.

2. The other memory, from the following month:

My family wasn't expecting me home for Thanksgiving because we didn't have a lot of money, and the break was so short and a bus trip would have been too long to justify for that brief a break. I'd spent Thanksgiving with my roomie's family the year before, only a few hours away. But this year, I knew a guy from Detroit with a car, and he was planning on driving home for the holiday, and had enough room to take me and another friend along and drop us off where we needed to go. So when he offered to drive us home and back in return for help with the gas money, I decided to surprise my family and show up.

I am white, and it just so happened that this guy was black, the significance of which will appear later.

The night before Thanksgiving, when we were taking off for the drive, the weather was bad. Snowy and nasty. The route of our trip was largely along Lake Erie, where as the natives know, snow squalls off the lake are common--huge, sudden blinding gusts of snow that completely obscure everything in front of you. Everything can be calm on either side of them, but in mid-squall, you can't see a damn thing. It makes for a driving nightmare, the kind that has people pulling off to the side of the road until it passes, or even checking into hotels because they realize they're not going to reach their destination in this stuff.

This young man who drove this trip amazed me. For much of our journey, snow squalls completely obstructed any view he had of the road. But he never once stopped, never once pulled off the road, never once even showed any sign of anxiety or panic. He just kept driving. Steadily and resolutely driving.

He dropped off our other friend first (we stopped briefly at his home to meet his family before we continued on), then me. And off he went, to complete his journey all the way to Detroit. Never once had he looked fazed or ruffled.

Now...here's how I connect those two memories:

1. In the first one, watching that presidential debate, I had the distinct feeling of being OUTSIDE the majority, outside the mainstream. Today, I feel exactly the opposite. For the first time in 28 years, I feel as if the majority of people in this country are seeing things my way, and are finally on the verge of repudiating Ronald Reagan and all his works. And it is a wonderful feeling.

2. In the second one, I, a young white woman, had placed my life and safety in the hands of a young black man about my age, whom I didn't yet know all that well, but whom I trusted enough to accept a ride with--and, for the latter part of that ride, we were alone. All other issues about my personal safety with him aside--a young woman traveling alone with a young man could reasonably have concerns about that, even if we were of the same race--I didn't know what kind of a driver he was; I didn't know whether having to cope with snow squalls off Lake Erie was going to throw him or not. But what I found was that when faced with them, this young man's response was to not get frightened or worried, but to JUST KEEP DRIVING. And, in the end, we both made it safely home.

And that is how I realize I feel about Barack Obama. Again, I am placing my life and safety--and this time, that of my country--in the hands of a black man, roughly my age, whom I trust enough to believe he will do the right thing. His race is irrelevant to me in the overall scheme of things. His gender is irrelevant to me in the overall scheme of things. I'm not afraid of him on either count--no one has been able to scare me out of going with him because of those things. Instead, I trust him.

I don't know what kind of a president he will be, but I have faith that even when I get worried and anxious about the storms coming up that he's going to have to help us get through, he's not going to get frightened or worried. He's just going to keep on driving.

And in the end, the country, and all of us, will make it safely back to the place we belong. And be able to move on from there.

thanks for bringing those memories together for us.

Brought back memories! I must be close to your age. Some dorm rooms had TVs, others didn't. Hardly anyone on campus liked Raygun.

Glad you all made it home safe and sound all those years ago! I wonder what your friend who drove you through the snow is up to these days?

I do recall that I heard some years later that his brother had been murdered somewhere on the streets of Detroit. Sad.

Wherever he is now, I hope he's safe and sound.

Very sad about his brother.

Thanks for this very uplifting OP.

The media was just starting to tune up with their right wing propoganda. Believing that I was still in the America I knew and loved, I bought into some of it without closely inspecting what I was hearing. Amidst cries of democrats as socialistic and talk of welfare queens I even...gasp...entertained the notion of voting for Reagan. Somehow, by voting for Reagan, I felt I might be better than those they scorned. I wanted to be one of them. **shudder**

Fortunately, I came to my senses in the voting booth and I am glad to say that I have NEVER voted Republican. Had I voted for Reagan, I don't think I would ever have been able to forgive myself.

But the memory I have is of being stuck at home on Inauguration Day with strepthroat, and watching as the Carters handed over the presidency to the Reagans. I remember crying because the contrast was so great between the Carters--very decent, salt-of-the-earth types on one side of the podium and the Reagans--very much like Cyndi and John McCain in terms of wealth display on the other side.

I felt that contrast was not just about these two couples, it was about the interests that they held in mainstream America. It was obvious to me who had my interests at heart--the Carters--and they were leaving office and Carter had done nothing wrong IMHO. I felt a sense of great loss that came out of nowhere it seemed.

Also, looking back I remember how it was a big joke that Reagan was even running. A MOVIE STAR???!!! For PRESIDENT???!!! That's the way news of Reagan's run was accepted initially. It was a big joke much like Palin is and Bush was. That Reagan was elected (I now wonder if he wasn't also (s)elected too) should be a lesson to anybody who thinks Palin is to be laughed at or dismissed. Joke at your own peril.

Also being a sophomore in college, and attending one several states away. Difference being that as an AA female, I was only one of only 400 AAs on a campus of 25,000 whites. Which means that *I* had to force myself into a "level of trust" being surrounded by a sea of white, and "placing my life and safety" into the hands of what was at the time, a pretty liberal university. But one where it was more often than not, "party time", which produced hundreds of drunk white males who would roam the dorm hallways screaming and shouting and jumping on tables to do Bruce Springstein impressions or hurling chairs down the hall or pumping water from the dorm fire hoses into the elevators. And this where (as it is still nonsensically voiced even today) whites would continually ask "Why do you blacks all sit together?", while I'd look around at table after table after table filled with nothing but whites. ;) But I suppose having a scotoma is par for the course.

Anyway - I was one of those who fortunately had my own B&W 13" Emerson TV in my room and watched the guffawing idiot 666 devil Ronald Wilson Reagan in the debate. I was initially under the assumption that as an incumbent, Carter would still have a chance at being re-elected... But I also felt that being a "minister", he wasn't assertive enough and a new type of politicking was taking shape thanks to Lee Atwater's perfection of tactics that would become standard among repukes today. Here a former jock, former GE and Twenty-Mule Team Borax pitchman, and former bad actor, had the gall to run for President. A man who had participated in blacklisting so many in the McCarthy '50s witch hunt. Yet he managed to have become a governor of the state with the largest population in the union.

But perhaps what helped him was similar to what is happening today (although the decisions to correct the problems were very different) - i.e., I remember that earlier that year, as the campaign was launched, gold shot up to $800/ounce (and I even recall the Max Robinson ABC broadcast of this), and I remember hearing from my mother that people here in Philly were lining up to sell their gold and silver. And like was almost done again this year, but WAS done back then - there was an Olympic boycott against a communist country, and that pissed people off because politics had intruded into sports.

So whoever Raygun was before, and however many people he stepped on to get to where he was - even having been a former Democrat - it wouldn't matter because the economy was in a mess and Carter was the President at the time, and here was a known "face" to "swoop in to save the day". And as the campaign droned on and the election produced a landslide for the alleged "Great Communicator, that marked the end of an era and the beginning of a nightmare that would last almost 30 years.

So the cycle is (hopefully) now complete and I'm hoping that we can get back to a period, not just before Reagan, but before Nixon, yet without the stress and strife, and more positive and something to look forward to. IMHO, this country needs to QUIET DOWN and reflect and get itself together. I know it will be extremely difficult to think in these terms given the collapse of the world economy, but I think Obama's evenness and demeanor will carry us through. And he will need the cooperation of Congress to do it.

Most excellent!

:bounce::applause::bounce:

:yourock:

:hi: