Vote for Joe

Average Joe Buckeye Blitz cont. I stumped with the “regulars” early this morning at LEMMY’S Restaurant in Huron, Ohio. And I learned LEMMY’S is actually a loose acronym for “Lake Erie Monster,” which (like the Big Foot legend) was supposedly sited about seven years ago around here. I said when I become president, like the UFO mysteries, I’d “get to the bottom of this thing…” I then talked to a 4th grade class at St. Peter’s Catholic School in Huron. (The teacher had just seen an article about the campaign in the Catholic Chronicle newspaper in the Toledo Diocese.) One student asked me about my education platform, and I told her I’d like to see one-third of all curriculum (k-12) be volunteer work in the community because, well, so many parts of society could use the help. And… “I want my own children to learn as much about helping others as they do learning about math, science, English…” After the talk I drove to Sandusky, Ohio and stumped on a downtown street corner there.

Average Joe Buckeye Blitz cont. Did a phone-in interview on the “Tom & Beth” morning radio show in Fostoria. Tom started with: “Ladies and gentlemen… we have a ‘Tom & Beth’ exclusive…” Tiffin’s Advertiser Tribune ran a front page story with the quote: “We don’t think we should be saying economy, economy, economy… when 24,000 people are dying each day from starvation [in the Third World],” said Schriner. (I had told reporter Matt Shuman that the operative word should be: “sharing.”) In Fremont, Ohio, I stumped with the regulars in Rudy’s Restaurant (“Where You’re The Boss!”), then met with Randy Fielding who has developed the organization Angels Inc. He’s developing a model for incarcerated youth to work at daytime jobs and in voluteerism. I told the News Herald in Port Clinton, Ohio, where I stopped next, that Feilding’s model only makes common sense. That is, why not take that jail time and make it as productive as possible for society — and for the person encarcerated.

Average Joe Buckey Blitz Tour cont. (Still on my hometown pit-stop…) President Bush’s motorcade comes up I-75 here this afternoon, passing by Bluffton, Ohio (pop. 3,800), my hometown. To get a jump on Mr. Bush, I went campaigning at Bluffton’s Farmer’s Market this morning. There I talked with a man from Louisiana and a woman visiting from Idaho. They both walked away wearing “average Joe” buttons. One of the market vendors, Cindy Basinger, said she’d been called by a Gallup Poll representative earlier in the week and was asked if she was voting for Kerry or Bush. “Neither. I’m voting for Joe Schriner,” she said. What’s more, the Bluffton College Library Director walked up to me at the Market and said a display case, with a current presidential candidate theme, just went on display at the library. “And you’re right there in it,” she said. So there, George! Note: A recent Chillicothe (Ohio) Gazette article noted I said that I could be the “Nader factor” in Ohio this year. With campaign success like this morning, you have to wonder that. Don’t you?

“Average Joe” Buckeye Blitz Tour cont. Met with Ed and Dorothy Bailey in Blanchester, Ohio today. In their retirement, they did a stint with the Peace Corps in the Phillipines. They helped provide loans to small farmers. Ed said where they were at in the village of San Fernando (pop. 4,000) was so poor, the only one who had a motor vehicle was the mayor. And he had an old, WWII jeep. What’s more, the mayor and his family had the only TV, a black & white one, which they watched for an hour each evening by hooking up the TV to the jeep’s battery. During Campaign 2000, I told a reporter for the Jackson Hole, Wyoming newspaper that we would like to see a tremendously expanded Peace Corps (made up, for instance, of many more retired couples like the Baileys) to promote much more social justice worldwide.

Average Joe Buckeye Blitz cont. I met with J.W. Simpson today, curator of the Blanchester (Ohio) Historical Society Museum. He said sparks from a passing locomotive are said to have ignited a livery stable on a windy October day in 1895 here — burning the whole 5-block downtown to the ground. Some 70 years later, a train coming down the same stretch of Blanchester tracks, made a “whistle-stop” with Barry Goldwater (who was running for president at the time). Old time resident, and retired City Department worker Ed Bailey said he lifted the town newspaper photographer “high up” in a heavy equipment bucket so he could take a picture of Goldwater. I told Ed he might not have to lift a photographer up, oh, “as high” at one of our whistle-stop events.