I crawled out of my car this chilly morning into the parking lot at my local grocer’s as the sun moved in and out of threatening clouds and I batted away the last of the falling leaves that look to me like orange wingless birds from paradise.
(I love starting my columns with poetic sentences like that to keep you awake on Sundays like this.)
I fixed my mask, one of the 60 I own, to my aging face as I entered, grasped a cold iron basket and shoved it along before me, to finally stand trembling before the many aisles.
Today, as you know, is only two days away from the election that will fill the history books. I’m surrounded by two kinds of villagers here on the edge of these last three days. All of this started with a brutal storm, that will, of course, wind up in the same history books along with the outcome of this political storm. One group, a pile of happy folks who just found whoopie pies in the fridge this morning, and the other as glum as figures in a Hieronymus Bosch painting, as they thumb, unsmiling, through the last of the brown speckled bananas.
The latter include my pale progressive comrades with expressions like the ill-fated Alexander Hamilton. Oh Lord, I did forget to mention that ancient election of 1801?
In fact, our current election should bring to historians’ minds the famous rivalry for the Federalist nomination between Aaron Burr and Thomas Jefferson.
My daughter, who corrects my columns, and who loves history and Broadway musicals like “Hamilton,” reminds me about the 1801 presidential race where Federalists Burr and Jefferson were, like today between Harris — I’m SORRY, Hamilton — and Trump, deadlocked.
History, she reminded me, showed that it took 36 ballots in the House (everything confused and nasty winds up in the House, doesn’t it?) before Jefferson, with help from Alexander Hamilton of all people, secured the nomination. He beat the incumbent John Adams.
This apparently freshened the nastiness between our current Broadway star “Hamilton” and old Burr, who never had a song written about him, that brought about that famous 1804 duel that laid poor Alex in the grave.
Thank God that duels have gone the way of rolled oats and we’re left with bluster and a lone woman.
Imagine for a moment that we stand on the edge of the Grand Canyon, looking into the abyss before us as the clay beneath us softens and cracks.
I have in my trembling hand a list to fill my fridge on Nov. 6. It is long, but a guy has to eat even if the clay cracks and sends us plummeting into the horror, darkness and pain of the Stygian river below.
You can look up the river Styx — it’s fun and scary.
For Kamala: Fresh vegetables for winter evenings, cheese and turkey from the deli, lots of fish like salmon and tuna steaks, good nutty bread sent in from … chocolate oat milk.
In case the worst befalls us, I bought boxes of French fries, cartons of Diet Coke, boxes of Milky Way bars and eight bags of McDonald’s Big Macs with lots of onion.
Well, why not? It may be the end of days.
J.P. Devine is a Waterville writer.
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