The story from Minnesota, of Ron Paul seems distant, seems like the story that Reagan would have preferred to tell, but then I could never tell what Reagan’s power was. I get this sense of Paul after watching a NYT video piece. Short and sketchy, its sound level jumps widely between the Paulites and Paul himself. Ron Paul’s voice is small, remote, while his followers are celebrating, loud, jubilant, costumed like childhood heros. Childhood heros from my life, my child hood. They are wearing Daniel Boone hats. Coonskin hats. The ones sold to my parents by Disney. It isn’t heroic if there isn’t a costume.

Ron Paul sounds as though he isn’t used to the press. He speaks weakly, unable to fill the room. Even so he holds the record for signs in the country.

I have recently put over 4500 miles into a drive around the rockies and northwest. Those in the countryside show his sign. Whether they know his message or share it I don’t know, but I saw zero Obama or McCain signs for hundreds of miles. Dozens of Paul. Obama picks up in California and colleges. I saw no McCain sign on the trip, only bumper stickers.The signs are placed in small or closed business lots.They are in the land of the side roads, places between places you are going. Those places I have been driving around these past months, like I did after the army. Searching for shadows among those on the land without any reason for moving. Staying is easier, that’s all, just easier.

So they stay, sheltered by distance. So they huddle among their broken, their rusting, their aging things. Stay through the green season and under the grey sky. They cling to their signs, and clamor at the convention. They do have that.I don’t believe in them, but I do believe them.

The St. Paulys’ sign at their convention proclaims their dislike for socialism. This probably means Democrats, since the socialist party may only consist of two retired physicists from Chicago, not much chance they will take over this year. So their signs tell us what they are against. Odd that they long so much for the social, just not the ism. I wonder if they have ever known a socialist. Probably not any more than they have known “a boy who killed a barr when he was only three.”