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The Believer Stalks the 2004 Democratic Candidates: Dispatches from a Few Cold Places
Dispatch One - Sunday, January 18 Dispatch Two - Thursday, January 22
DISPATCH THREE—Grimness
Abounds Manchester, NH We have a brand new white Mustang with an aqua splash up the side of the big coupe doors. And yet—things are slipping in New Hampshire. We feel out of the loop and our accommodations continue to decline. Consider this: nine days ago, we had full run of a nice, old, two-story house in quaint little Iowa City, with the Foxhead, a great local bar, around the corner. We left to join Dean's press entourage for a few days, where they put us up at the Ottumwa AmericInn, a very comfortable rural hotel chain, followed by a decent Super 8 in Mason City. The last few days in Iowa we roomed at the dowdiest hotel in downtown Des Moines, a Quality Inn & Suites downgraded from a Best Western and missing carpeting in places. As bad as that place was, however, it was no match for the Manchester EconoLodge. "This is it?" Steve said as we pulled the white Mustang into the parking lot at 2 a.m. We were looking at a massive nineteenth-century five-story brick warehouse that had been converted into the most grim place of lodging I've ever seen. Inside, the floors were uneven and the ceilings were maybe eight feet high. I told Steve that I wouldn't be surprised if it's not even a real EconoLodge. You know, like, maybe it's freelance or something. Div, the four-and-a-half-foot-tall Indian guy who works the nightshift, was copying one day's room list by hand to a new sheet of paper for the following morning. The check-in process required a lot of little slips of paper, initials, and numbers in boxes. "I think people live here," Steve said. "There's definitely a weekly rate thing going on." At this late hour, there were people shuffling back and forth, and some even stood outside in sweatshirts only, braving the very bitter cold to share a solitary Marlboro 100 Light. I asked Div where to get some late-night food. He had no idea. Some kid in a hoodie behind me said, "Just pick this up and dial 70." There was a tan house-phone on the wall. "What happens then?" I asked. "They'll tell you whatever." "Who's on the other end?" "I don't fuckin' know." The EconoLodge, I found out, offers its long-term residents dinner—from a vending machine in a little recess down one of the cramped little hallways. Next to me, an older fellow rocked the neighboring machine. His Fritos were stuck. Surveying the meal options, I decided against the Badazz Chicken Sandwich for $2.75 and chose Weight Watchers' Asian Noodle Bowl, which was a little pricier at $3.50, and took twenty minutes to heat in our room's feeble microwave. "This is what it's come to," Steve said as we settled in our beds and watched an infomercial about some doctor who claims that all medical ailments are caused by an "acidic body content." Turns out the rest of the state is pretty much the same as the EconoLodge. New Hampshire has this long tradition of political independence—"Live free or die" is the state motto—and in this century that independence has translated into a conservative/libertarian streak that keeps the government from collecting enough taxes to pay for anything. Manchester is dreary and dirty and everyone seems surrounded by a cloud of gloom; but don't take it from me. Here's what Dave, a lifetime New Hampshirer, and our cabdriver Friday morning, volunteered with gusto: "You guys are from California? What do you think of the broads up here then—aren't they all ugly? Yeah, they're all fat and wear sweatpants and have missing teeth and black eyes and tattoos. And attitudes. Everyone's got an attitude up here. Especially in Manchester. This is probably the worst town in... the country, I'd say. Every house needs a fuckin' paint job. All the cars are broken. No one works. They're all running some kind of fuckin' scam and collecting SSI disability. Haven't you seen all the people wandering up and down Elm on tranquilizers? There's a mental hospital up near Concord and they get out and just wander around down here. You should see it on the 3rd and the 7th —everyone has money when the SSI checks come. The whole town is jumpin' then. And by the end of the month they're paying with quarters." Dave also told us how he's looking forward to going to the Bahamas this weekend so he can meet up with his dad to watch the Superbowl, when he'll put money against the Patriots. ("Fuck those Massholes," was his explanation.) Strikingly, his description of Manchester was not unlike what I'd already observed after only twelve hours, eight of which I spent sleeping. There's trash on all the streets and collecting in the doorways, including those at the front of the Verizon Wireless Arena, where the next big local event after the Primary is Mullet Night II on March 12. Everywhere—outside the Holiday Inn, the gas station, the CVS—there were people loitering in the raw wind who looked like they'd seen trouble in their years. One cashier I ran into had a single eye so messed up that the white part was deep red. All the polls here say that the issue New Hampshire voters are most concerned about is health care, and I know why: everyone here needs serious treatment of some kind. Like, incidentally, the sort that the good doctor Dean can administer. Vermont and New Hampshire happen to be a perfect case study of how to and how not to run a state. With New Hampshire as the clearly ailing control group, Vermont shows what happens if you take some initiative and experiment with fiscally accountable liberalism. You get a rural trendsetter, a place with strong traditions, but leading the way in agriculture and social responsibility—the land of Ben and Jerry's and the Farmer's Diner. Let everything go to hell, as has been the prevailing theory across the state line, and you get today's New Hampshire. But perhaps the first thing you need to know about New Hampshire, which I'll share last, is the fate of the Old Man on the Mountain. The Old Man is, in fact, five ledges of red granite stacked atop the Cannon Cliffs, which create a giant human profile when you stand in the right place. Enoch Colby first noticed the Old Man in 1805, while surveying the shores of Profile Lake up in the White Mountains, a beautiful area north of Manchester that is the state's one real treasure. The Old Man is the emblem of New Hampshire, which is known as the Granite State for all that solid rock that makes up much of the landscape. Inspired by that profile, Daniel Webster famously said: "Men hang out their signs indicative of their respective trades; shoe makers hang out a gigantic shoe; jewelers a monster watch, and the dentist hangs out a gold tooth; but up in the Mountains of New Hampshire, God Almighty has hung out a sign to show that there He makes men." But that was two centuries ago. In the years since, the granite has weakened from erosion, and last May, the Old Man of the Mountain ditched the scene altogether and leaped from his perch, crumbling to pieces in the fall.
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