"Walking with the Wind"

The other day we mentioned that Congressman John Lewis was the featured speaker at the opening of Barack Obama'a Northwest Florida campaign office. That day, he shared with the crowd an amusing childhood memory about his aunt's "shotgun house" that seems particularly apt in this hurricane season.

Luckily, someone with the screen name of Dr.Barnes1 has preserved it for posterity on Youtube. (After some equally fascinating preliminaries, a rough transcript appears below the video):

Well, one Saturday afternoon about this time of day a few of my bothers and sisters and first cousins were out playing in Aunt Sheneva's dirt yard, and an unbelievable storm came up. The wind started blowing. The thunder started rolling. The lightning started flashing. And the rain started beating on the tin roof of this old shotgun house.

My aunt became terrified. She started crying. She thought the little old house was going to blow away. She got all of us little children in and we all started crying because we thought the house was going to blow away.

If one corner of this little house appeared to be lifting from its foundation, she has us walk over to that side to try to hold the house down with our bodies. If the other corner appeared to be lifting, she has us walk to that side. We were literally walking with the wind. But we never left the house.

I say to you, as volunteers, as staffers, as supporters of Barack Obama, you must never, ever leave the house. Just hold the house together. Let us stay in one house. It doesn't matter whether we're black or white or Hispanic or Asian American or Native American, we all live in the same house. We're one family, so stay together. Work for Barack Obama!