What I am looking for in the Next President: Someone Who Knows the Difference Between Concord and Nashua

[fifth in a series]

--Mark Standish, Merrimack County, NH

Here in New Hampshire people sure are talking a lot about politics lately. I guess it’s not that different from what we’re usually talking about. Seems like you can’t go anywhere—from Dixon’s Hardware down on Ellsworth to Rosie’s over on the other side of Denton—without someone mentioning the demolished house over on State St. or the logging project down around Penacook Lake. Yup, everywhere you go it’s politics.

The problem as far as I see it comes every three years or so, when some hotshot news van come cruising into town from Boston or New York or someplace worse, taking all the good booths at Varney’s Diner, yukking it up with Carl behind the counter so as me and Gertie got to wait to have our Tuesday pie or a refill of coffee. Now don’t get me wrong. I like the attention we get, and Lord knows Carl and Rosie and all the rest enjoy the business—and far be it from to complain about getting an honest wage—but it just seems like these so-called professionals, the journalists and pollsters, just don’t know squat about the issues.

Some fella the other day asked me what my thoughts are about illegal immigration. I told him that for the most part Canadians are pretty decent folk thought their taste in hockey is terrible. Then I asked him what he thought about the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen absorbing the Kimball Jenkins School of Art. He stopped talking to me after that.

A few days ago, down by the filling station on 107, downabout where Barnstead turns into Gilmanton, I was asked about tensions in the middle east and whether or not I felt safe from terrorism. I told that kid that I’m more scared of some tie-dyed hippie coming down from Burlington, stinking of maple syrup, trying to swap my five-pound lobster from Portsmouth with some Lake Champlain New Age chocolate crap. He didn’t like that so much so he asked me about Osama Been Seen Lately. So I asked this guy in his pinstripe suit if he though Al-Qaeda was out to get my lobsters and case of Smuttynose or set a bomb off at the big bike race at Laconia. The guy didn’t even know where Laconia was! And he’s some kind of expert.

When I was asked which candidate I was throwing my support behind, I had to think for a minute before I told the man, “I am not quite sure whether I have a dog in this hunt or not. I got this feeling like I don’t know whether to wind my watch or howl at the moon.” He didn’t write that down, I noticed.

In the mean time, I am hoping there’s a candidate out there who’ll earn my vote, because I don’t give anything away for free.