A Floating Orange Honeymoon

By Dan McCarthy on Fri, Jan 4, 2008 4:27 pm

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French-Canadian child laborers at the turn of the 20th Century comprised an early, hearty chunk of the blue-collar workforce Manchester, New Hampshire built its economic foundation upon. They toiled long hours at the employ of the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company, its multiple mill structures still lining Manchester’s Merrimack River, and this morning the Tower Mill on Bedford Street housed the John Edwards arrival rally, welcoming Number Two from his “thank-Christ-I-beat-Hillary” win in Iowa.

Ghosts of all those hardened tots from the mills were probably as pissed as us this morning, having to show to the 6:15am call time on the third floor only to learn the candidate was late, and a campaign DJ thought blaring Michael Jackson’s “Can’t Stop Till You Get Enough” on repeat under the hot lights would both sooth the mob while keep the room’s energy laced with ginger. Without it, the crowd serving as the expected backdrop for the mainstream media’s video clips would perhaps have been as dead as all the 9 year-old kiddies who once punched the clock for a fresh 18 hour shift, serving the Corporate Bosses employing them. The irony, given Edwards pitch, was palatable.

The view from the pipes was good though, and one couldn’t help feeling like Mick at the end of Crocodile Dundee, scaling the industrial plumbing bolted above while practically stepping on the heads in front of you. But there was nowhere to go even if you wanted to. The floor was packed solid; the part open for the crowd anyway: half of the entire available space was curtained off for press only, and more beyond that reserved for media equipment and tiered stands. Remaining space was limited and so tight I would’ve passed out butter at the door to squeeze in the Edwardites, had I discovered the breakfast table sooner. (Note: I don’t think it would’ve mattered, considering I later bumped into Maureen Dowd of the New York Times who seemed to be circling the bagels with a sense of malice in her eye…)

Picture a crude YMCA of yesteryear, a structure that in its day employed 17,000 people in an 8 million sq. ft. workspace. Only this youth club came with more pissed adults supervising, less basketball hoops, and so many bitchin’ ways for a 10 year old to lose a finger working the textile trade. This is the history of the setting John Edwards was 45 minutes late for, entering the crammed rally with a trademark grin and bags the size of golf balls under his eyes as he launched into familiar grey rhetoric: fighting for the working class, taking on Washington greed, and change for America. Presumably a breed of change his rival Barak Obama isn’t going to bring.

I won’t bore you with the content of his greeting speech to the crowd. If you saw his speech after the Iowa caucus last night, you’ve heard it essentially word for word. This morning basically found him higher pitched, with his voice cracking a few times underscoring the physical strain of the trail. Last week’s efforts in Iowa are creeping up on him causing his normal orange-marmalade smoothness to snap like Bobby Brady’s voice, and furthermore casting a slightly dazed hue over his expression. I wonder what he’ll sound like later tonight, at oh, 7pm, at the Nashua rally? At this rate I’d wager he’ll closely resemble someone who’s just deep-throated a Rhino, but the day isn’t over yet. Not for us, anyway. The specter of 18-hour workdays haunts Manchester even now, 4 days from the primary: if not for the candidates, then definitely for your correspondent.