On some chilly and rainy NH election day back in 1960-something, my father invited me to tag along to a “boiler room” in downtown Manchester. Oh boy! I would have tagged along just about anywhere for the chance to spend some extra time with my dad. Dad’s “boiler room” turned out to have no actual boilers but lots of busy grown-ups and loud-ringing phones. They were getting out the vote, my dad explained, it was very important. People with no cars could call up the “boiler room” for a ride to the polls.
I was “helping” by passing out paper cups of weak coffee when a man with gray hair beckoned me over. “Little girl, do you see this dime? Do you know whose picture is on it?” He had such a heavy French-Canadian accent that he wasn’t very easy to understand.
I looked closely at the dime. “It’s Roosevelt, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” he almost shouted. “It’s Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And do you know why I come here, every year?”
“No, sir,” I said, wishing that my father would rescue me.
“Franklin Delano Roosevelt, that’s why I come every year. Because back when the mills closed, when I lost my job and I couldn’t find a new one. When my family was hungry–my children were hungry. Franklin Delano Roosevelt turned things around. And that’s why I come here, and I’ll come here every year. Franklin Delano Roosevelt.”
The memory ends there, just when I’d stopped wanting to be rescued and started wanting to remember every word. But, over the years, I’ve often thought of that man and his busy, jangling boiler-room .
So, if you have wondered why I should care so much about the NH phone-jamming scandal, when some Republican wiseguys tried to disrupt the Democrats’ get-out-the-vote effort with multiple hangup phone calls… Maybe I care because my dad would have cared. And maybe I care because of that old man with his Roosevelt dime.