And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

—William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming”
_________________________________________

The final weekend. It all closes in, the raging noise, the incessant campaign attack commercials on every channel, the rabble rousing threats of violence and rioting. It punctures every facet of one’s awareness.

It’s impossible to detach. Strain and tension permeate the atmosphere. Around the country and the whole world.

Oh Lord, I groan. Let this, too, pass.
____________
THE WEEKEND

I leave for a trade show, the first of the season. A small show at Delaware Valley College in Doylestown. Might as well go hang out with wacky horse people for a few days.

I arrive Saturday morning and set up my booth. Small show, maybe sixty vendors. First year for it. It opens at ten. Traffic is slow from the get go. A few mild rushes, mostly nothing. Probably our first and last year at this venue, I figure.

I mingle with the other vendors. We chat. Complain about the lack of show traffic. My neighboring table hosts girl scouts. Some trail ride setup. They have free candy and cookies. I chat with the Den Mother. She’s friendly enough, and almost normal. No horse person is completely normal. Turns out she’s a Democrat. No big surprise there. I avoid identifying my political allegiance, or lack thereof.

She returns to her scout troop. I hear her speak Sarah Palin’s name, followed by scornful snickers. Den Mother is busy indoctrinating her precious little troops.

“You laughing at Sarah?” I ask, irritated. Leave her alone. You snide easterners.

“Yep,” Den Mother answers.

“You better not,” I retort.

“We are,” she replies.

“You better not,” I repeat. “Don’t even get me started on Obama.”

They huddle and lower their voices. I ignore them.

Thankfully, the show reaches its disastrous conclusion on Sunday afternoon. Suppos-edly at five, but all the vendors are packing and fleeing at four. Nothing going on. I leave Delaware Valley College, probably forever. Head home to slurp up the Simpsons Halloween Special and some good old Sunday Night Football.

The Colts beat the vile Bellichek and his evil Brady-less Patriots.
________
MONDAY

I sleep in. Take the day off, as I usually do after a weekend show. Finally rouse up around ten and head to the gym. One day to go.

Glenn Beck is on the radio. I like Glenn. Today he’s somber. Worried. Mostly about his job. Nah, that’s not fair. I give him credit. He’s worried first about where the country is headed. Then about his job. He figures the Fairness Doctrine might knock him off the air. He may be right.

Rush bounces on at noon. Loud and boisterous as always. Rages against Obama. I detect a tinge of fear, maybe mild hysteria. I like Rush. Respect him a lot, mostly for his outlook on life through good and bad times. Today he’s urging people to get out and vote. Just go. The polls are what they are. Who knows how biased for Obama? Designed to suppress the conservatives, Rush claims. He may be on to something. I don’t know.

I check my email. Loads of forwarded junk. Don’t forget to vote, one admonishes. What am I, a child? Obama is like Hitler, screams another. I sigh and wonder what sins I’ve committed in the past that would make anyone believe I have the slightest interest in reading this political garbage. I’m an adult. I’ll vote if I want to. Won’t if I don’t want to. I delete the emails without reading them. There will be many more in the next twenty-four hours, I think to myself resignedly.

Election eve. I check Drudge. Polls bouncing all over. Obama blowout, screams one. McCain closing, proclaims another. They all show a decent percentage of undecideds. If McCain wins, it’ll be because they broke for him.

I watch a bit of Monday Night Football and head for bed. Tomorrow is the day.
________
TUESDAY

I head back to the office. Daylight savings time came on Sunday. The day drags. A buddy calls. He’d gone out and bought a new rifle the night before. The gun shop was jammed. People buying rifles and handguns. Gun sales have shot up 30% to 50%, in anticipation of an Obama win. Fear reigns. Of what the Dems will do, if they win it all. It won’t be pretty.

The talk shows are strangely muted. Glenn Beck believes Obama will win. He’s uncharacteristically quiet, reflective. But not Rush. He’s not convinced Obama will win. Or at least that’s what he claims. Don’t watch the news, he says. They’ll call the states early for Obama. Don’t pay any attention. Come back and listen tomorrow. I’ll have it all for you.

I don’t know what to think. I still believe McCain will pull it out. Or at least that it will be much closer than we’ve been led to believe. Just something deep down. But I don’t know. There is no early exit polling this year. Not after the Kerry debacle four years ago, where the exit polls had him winning in a landslide. The networks don’t want that egg on their faces again. They’ll be more careful.

Time crawls. I hate the week after a time change. Screws up one’s interior time clock. Five o’clock finally arrives. It’s getting dark outside. I head for the gym, then the polls. No crowds this late. I’m relieved.

I take a paper ballot and walk into a booth. I vote my principles.

I meet a friend for dinner. We chat over a leisurely meal. When I get home, it’s nine o’clock. Eastern polls have been closed for an hour. Time for calls to be made on the race.

This year, I have purposed not to watch any TV talking heads on election night. Can’t stomach their superior, sneering faces. I click on Drudge instead. Check the numbers. Tight in the battleground states. With 10% of the vote counted, Pennsylvania is called for Obama. Oh, well. It’ll be that kind of night. Republicans losing several Senate seats, too.

I go to bed a bit after ten. Tomorrow will tell. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

I sleep fitfully through the night.
____________________
WEDNESDAY & BEYOND

The alarm clatters. 5:45, time to get up. I fire up the computer and go take a shower while it warms up. Dress. Then sit down and click on Drudge.

Obama is our new President. Electoral landslide. I’m not surprised, but to actually see it, staring coldly from the screen, leaves a hard knot in the pit of my stomach.

He did it. Give credit where it’s due. He won it all. Both houses of Congress with him. All the power to the Dems.

At least the vile Al Franken hasn’t pulled it off in MN. Not yet. They’ll keep recounting until he wins. That’s the way Democrats work.

The office is muted. We discuss the election. What it means. What the future holds. What might change, and likely will. Higher taxes. Diminished second amendment rights.

For true freedom lovers, America is now an occupied country. As it has been for years, under Bush the Younger. And would have remained, regardless of who won this round. But especially so now under Obama. And Reid and Pelosi, two of Washington’s most wacko liberal crackpots.

A new day has dawned. Of “hope and change.” Vacant, undefined terms. Successfully sold by a slick Chicago huckster to a roaring, cheering mob of mindless swooning sheeple. A huckster who never worked an honest day’s labor at a real job in his life.

Republicans now inhabit the wilderness. As they so richly deserve. They will remain there until they repent. If they don’t repent, they’ll wander, forever lost.

In the meantime, dark forces of a new kind of oppression will be unleashed upon the land. They will reign, seemingly unchecked, and will do their utmost to dispirit, to de-stroy, to demonize, to mold and forge this country into the image of evil they worship in their hearts.

And they will succeed, to some extent. To the victors go the spoils.

Until a new force arises from the ashes and casts out the vile oppressors. Based on the raw simple concepts of freedom from the tyranny of the intrusive secular nanny state. Freedom to worship without being labeled hateful. Freedom to reap the rewards of one’s own labor. Freedom to be left alone. Freedom that will live always in the hearts of those who yearn for it. Value it. Cherish it.

The seeds are sown, they have sprouted, the free forces of liberty will grow. They multiplied exponentially in the past year under the great Ron Paul. Soon, a new and younger leader will rise and take up the banner from his tired and faltering hands.

It will be a long war, with many lost battles. Especially in the next two to four years. But the truth crushed to earth will rise again. Always has, always will. In the long term. Of not just years, or even decades, but generations.

Those who refuse to bow the knee to Ba’al will never surrender.

And so, with real hope for genuine change and true freedom, we continue the endless slog through the long night that envelopes us, toward the distant promise of a new and shining dawn.

“And the great winds howl and swoop across the land:
they make a distant roaring in great trees, and boys in
bed will stir in ecstasy, thinking of demons and vast
swoopings upon the earth.”

—Thomas Wolfe, “Of Time and the River”
_____________________________________________

We stood there in the graveled barnyard beside the old concrete water tank by the windmill, dressed in our ragged denim coats to fend off the nippy air. My brother Titus and me, two little boys outside after supper. The shadows of late October crept in and closed around us. To the west, a faint orange glint in the cloud-rimmed skies reflected the last vestiges of the setting sun.

“Yep,” Titus announced wisely, “this week is Halloween. We’ll have to pull the buggies into the shed. Can’t leave’em out overnight.”

Above us bats and nighthawks flitted and swooped about. In the woods a quarter mile to the south, something ungodly, who knows what, screeched and wailed. An owl, maybe. I was probably six years old and had a vague idea of what Halloween was. It was a certain night in late October when we didn’t go away. Stayed inside.

Trick or treating would have been as foreign to me as Easter eggs. No such concept existed in my world. We did get Halloween candy, wrapped in twisted paper, gunky gooey stuff that stuck to your teeth and the roof of your mouth. Not my favorite.

So I knew what Titus was talking about. But I asked anyway.

“Why? Why do we have to put the buggies inside the shed?”

Titus paused. “So the Halloweeners don’t take them,” he said dramatically.

Halloweeners. I’d never seen one, but the word sent shivers down my spine. Boogey-men. Wicked English people who came around after dark at Halloween and did bad things. They harbored a particular affinity for vandalizing the Amish farms in Aylmer.

We’d heard the stories from the time we could talk. Halloweeners lurked around on the gravel roads at night in pickup trucks or old beater cars. Driving slowly with lights out. They sneaked onto Amish places and tipped over outhouses. (Yes, most Amish farms had an outhouse, even though there was running water in the house.)

They were also fond of hooking a buggy behind their vehicle and taking off down the road with buggy in tow. The buggy might show up in a field miles away the next day. Or it might be burned or smashed. I vaguely recall the story of how one buggy ended up on top of a farmer’s shed. How it got up there is anyone’s guess. Lots of muscle power, I suppose.

From the recesses of my memory, I also recall how one of our neighbors to the west decided to sit in his buggy on Halloween night to guard it. Sure enough, the evil Halloweeners showed up after midnight. Details remain sketchy, but somehow he made enough noise to alert them and scared them off. Stupid thing to do, that. They might have hurt him.

And then of course, there was one other activity Halloweeners loved to do. And not just at Halloween. Year round, especially in the summer months. And that was smashing mailboxes.

They usually clubbed mailboxes with an iron bar, or smashed them with a large rock. Occasionally backed a vehicle into the mailbox post and snapped it.

Halloweeners weren’t a major continuous presence, but they were a fear factor. Not everyone’s buggies were towed away, not everyone’s mailbox was smashed. I can’t remember that our outhouse was ever tipped over. Probably because it was too big and bulky. And placed behind the house, making it hard to get to quietly.

So we did what most families did in the community. We pulled our buggies into the open front machine shed on Halloween eve. Out of sight, so as not to tempt any scouting Halloweeners.

But our mailbox was another matter. It was targeted at least once, maybe more.

(NOTE: The details of the following story may be mildly embellished, as the characters involved may or may not attest.)

At dusk one late summer evening, my oldest brother Joseph glanced out of his upstairs bedroom window to the west. Half a mile away a car approached slowly, lights out, dawdling along. Joseph was instantly suspicious that the occupants might be up to no good.

He quickly called his brother Jesse in the next bedroom. The two of them dressed hastily and ran out to the front yard, carrying a flashlight. One of them snuck out to the road and picked up a hefty rock. They then crouched behind a good-sized bush, conveniently planted in the yard about fifteen feet from the mailbox. Two strapping young Amish boys defending their home turf, waiting in suspense as darkness settled around them.

They heard the muffled growl of the idling engine as the dawdling car crept toward them on the crunching gravel road. As it neared our mailbox, it slowed to a crawl. Then stopped. They heard the passenger’s window squeaking as it was hand-cranked down. In the haze between dusk and darkness, they saw a shadowy figure, a thug Halloweener, reaching out, wielding in his hands a solid iron bar. He lifted it high and smashed it down with all his might on our mailbox. They heard the dull crunch of the blow.

But only once. As the thug lifted the bar above his head to smash down again, my brave brothers emerged from behind the bush. Joseph snapped on the heavy duty 12-volt flashlight. The bright beam abruptly flooded the car. Two men in the front seat, the passenger hung suspended from the window, arms lifted above his head. Two hazy shadows sat in the back seat. They froze as the light enveloped them. Jesse then stepped up beside his brother. He wound up and heaved the large rock with all his might. It arced, spinning through the darkness like a missile of vengeance and smashed into a metal fender with a great crunching thud.

Inside the car, the stunned Halloweeners reacted quickly. The passenger with the iron bar lurched back through the window, falling back onto the seat. The rock probably had narrowly missed him. Then the driver punched down hard on the gas. The car fishtailed as it roared away, spitting a shower of gravel from its rear tires.

The cowardly enemy was routed. The valiant warriors stood victorious, tall and strong and confident. They had successfully defended the borders of their homeland.

Shaking with excitement, my brothers ran out to the road and looked to the east after the fleeing car. They then snuck quietly back into the house and upstairs to their bed-rooms. They had a tale to tell. But they had to be careful. Father would not be pleased with such aggressive resistance to evil. Not in keeping with the Amish tradition of non-resistance, and all that.

Fortunately for them, he never found out. But the rest of us sure did. We reveled in the glory of it and rehashed the story countless times over the years.

But we never told. Until now.

*************************

Those who dislike political discussion may skip this paragraph. It’s now down to the final days, and boy, am I ready for it to be over. I’m sick to death of all the lying blowhards. Meanwhile, I am sticking with my original predictions. The OBAMA! camp seems increasingly skittish with each passing day. We’ll see. And yes, I still plan to vote for Chuck Baldwin. Or Ron Paul. Or maybe not at all.

There was much strutting and crowing about the office all day Monday, as the Phillies took a 3-1 lead over the Rays on Sunday night. I advised my tormentors not to count their chicks before they hatch, that the fat lady hadn’t sung yet. They smirked and said she’s tuning up for the finale.

Sure enough, because of pouring rain, Tuesday’s game was stopped after 5-1/2 innings, tied 2-2. First time that happened in World Series history. Tension was palpable around the office for the next two days. I did my best to exacerbate it, loudly proclaiming that perhaps the fat lady had caught a cold.

But in the end, when they finished that game on Wednesday night, the Phillies pulled it out. With the help of the umps, as was the case all through the series. Had to be by far the worst-umped World Series or any series that I’ve ever seen. But still, the Phillies deserve all the accolades in the world. They won it all. Ultimately, that’s why they play.

The Rays deserve credit. They were young and relaxed and just might have pulled it off, had a few of those atrocious ump calls gone their way. But they didn’t. And no worst-to-first team has ever won a championship in any major professional sport. That fact still stands.

The blog is a beautiful thing, upon occasion. Powerful, too. After my lament for pie in last week’s post, I received a mysterious invitation to dinner at an Amish friend’s house. Nothing too unusual about that, I stop by often to hang out. I sat with the family and we ate a delicious home-cooked meal. And then the lady of the house proudly trotted out two fresh raisin cream pies. I was astounded. And they were absolutely mouth watering. The Amish of Lancaster County don’t know the joys of raisin cream pie. She had hunted up a recipe and baked them for the first time, just for me.

Of course, I got to take the remnants home with me. It pays to have connections, I thought to myself as I left.

Having good friends is even better.

What should I pine for next? World peace, perhaps? The lion snuggling with the lamb? Nah. I’ll settle for something a bit more realistic. And attainable. Like a fresh-baked cherry pie.