"Do you know where the downtown Obama office was in 2008?" she asks me.
The voter registration planning meeting in my house has been over for a while, and a few folks are just sitting around talking
I do remember that office but I mostly worked through another office, closer to my home. She volunteered in that downtown office nearly every day throughout the 2008 campaign
"There's a vacant lot near there" she says. I'm pretty sure I know which lot she's talking about: just a few doors down from the office, very visible, hard to miss
We're talking about old days. But she's a decade older than I am. And she's from around here; I'm not
"That was a drugstore" she tells me. "In 1972, I tried to get a drink at the counter there. And they wouldn't serve me. 1972!"
She pauses
"You know, they finally tore that drug store down, because they didn't want to integrate the lunch counter!"
Forty years ago, and she still remembers it like it was yesterday
When they're all gone, I finally remember something myself: not from forty years ago but from four years ago. After a day of GOTV work I'd gone home, when the polls closed, to watch the election returns. But somehow I didn't want to be alone, and so I headed off to the downtown office. It was a cold evening, and either a light freezing drizzle or a trace of snow was falling. I parked and started trudging up the street and came to the vacant lot. It was full of people. A huge screen had been mounted on the building beside the lot, and a crowd stood there in the bitterly cold evening to watch Obama win
= new reply since forum marked as read
I got a lump in my throat... 
