That Great Come and Get It Day!

You know those photo ops where the candidate kisses a baby...Well, I was one of those kids, two weeks old when Adlai Stevenson posed with me, to my mother's great pride. Politics, the right to vote and being an American have always been important in our family. My grandmother was a post master (not post mistress thank you), and remembered August 1920 when American women won the right to vote. My Mom was a great campaigner and took me along with her when she was stuffing envelopes or waving signs...I loved it...the excitement... the adrenaline, when the candidate would come into view..the bright colors...the whooping and hollering...The first actual candidate I remember working for was President Kennedy. I still have the flag I was given to wave for him and a photo that was sent to me after his election... I saw him twice and my stomach still stirs at the memories..it was an excitement akin to my later screaming for the Beatles...even as an eight year old I knew that I was seeing and being part of something important, that a new, wonderful chapter was beginning in history! I have thousands of other political memories but nothing had felt like that long ago time until this past Tuesday when I was fulfilling my post as an election offical...Mom had always told us we were 7th cousins to Abraham Lincoln and that lucky honor had never felt so huge...I woke up with the tune "On that Great Come and Get It Day" running through my head...all day long I kept bursting into this song...then as the results began rolling in and it was getting closer to his being declared the winner...I would dash out to my car to listen briefly to the radio...I kept bursting into tears...then a fireman pulled me aside, at the firehouse I was working at, and told me Obama had been declared the winner!...The song in my head changed to the chorus from the"Battle Hymn of the Republic", it was Lincoln's favorite abolionist song during the Civil War...GLORY,GLORY HALLELUJAH!...Godspeed and bless you President-Elect Obama! Indeed finally a new page of history is awaiting for you! May you flourish and may Peace reign.

This link about the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" has an audio file also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_Hymn_of_the_Republic