He's Still Just Joey From the Block

First, I'm not a real political gal, and this is not a real political post. But I'm from Delaware. Southern Delaware, rural Delaware. Or slower lower Delaware, as we so affectionately refer to it. It's where people I grew up with aspired to be "farmen" or "purmedics", and "up to" and "down to" are the only direction in which you can travel, i.e. "I'm goin up t' the farhouse for the Oyster Eat" (which is still men only, btw). So I love Joe Biden, like my fellow Delawarean Mr. Lady whom I stole the idea for this post from. Lovelovelove him. Have ever since I was a child. Here's why.


Every year, I think in early fall, my parents took my sister and I to this party at somebody's house way back in the woods outside our town. I think there was a river or creek right behind it. It may have been an orchard, because I remember perfectly spaced trees lining the looooooong driveway. Hell, let's just call a spade a spade. It was a farm. Way back in the middle of nowhere. And this party was a Democratic party, one of those private "events" you hear about politicians attending. There was a buffet line outside under a big white event tent, folding chairs set out in rows. It was a styrofoam plate and plastic fork kinda event. (Compare this to the parties my best friend's parents threw for the other powerful and influential Delaware Senator, the late Senator Bill Roth. Those were catered, good china, cocktails by the fireplace kinda shindigs, if ya know what I'm sayin)


So I remember this man, standing at a podium set out in front of those folding chairs under the tent, talking. And people listened. They sat in the chairs and put down their barbeque-y plates and listened to him talk. They all called him 'Joe'. He was just Joe. I don't know what just Joe was saying; I was more interested in the hay rides on the back of a flatbed pulled by a horse down that looooooong driveway. But I know people listened. And they loved him, really loved him. I remember my mom saying with real affection, "I love Joe Biden. He should have been president". 


You probably don't know just Joe. You only know Senator Joe Biden from Delaware, the man who can't stop talking. He's done so much for Delaware that people don't even realize. And he's done a lot for the country, too, besides just talking himself hoarse on Meet the Press. He's a good man, an incredibly smart man, a real man, the kind that would have been a farman and been damned proud of it. 


Sitting in the car last night, listening to his acceptance speech on the radio, I realized what he was saying to the people all those years ago. "Hi, I'm Joe". He's still just Joe. And I love him for it.