THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, September 3, 1996 TAG: 9609030045
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: GUY FRIDDELL
LENGTH: 80 lines
The smiling young woman who boarded the hotel elevator in Chicago wore a cap emblazoned with ``Virginia'' over its bill.
Her bright, open face disclosed her changing moods as a pond reflecting sudsy clouds moving across the sky on a windy, sunny day.
``Where you from in Virginia?'' I asked the young convention delegate.
``I'm from Kentucky - Frankfort,'' she confessed, ``but dressed this way because I didn't want anybody to know it. I'm in disguise.''
``Doesn't make any difference,'' I said. ``We were once one.''
``Yes, and we Kentuckians enjoy being roommates with you Virginians, commonwealth to commonwealth,'' she said, sashaying away.
Another morning two couples in their early 60s got aboard the elevator, laughing as if they were on a great adventure - which they were, going about nominating a candidate for president.
One of the husbands was saying that his wife, Edith, always turned right in the corridor upon leaving their room instead of left - ``unless,'' he said, ``she's behind me.
``I told her this morning, `Edith, you won't get it right in your head to turn left until the day before we leave.' ''
The woman who wasn't Edith said, ``I'm so tarred after last night's party, I don't know which way to turn.''
Charmed by their easy, drawling talk, sounding as though they were from Southwest Virginia, God's retreat, I leaned, relaxed, against the elevator's control board - and my shoulder hit the alarm button, which set off a shrieking banshee buzz that made us all jump. It went on and on, blasting the air.
``HE'S DONE RUINED IT FOR ALL OF US!'' yelled the woman who was tarred. ``LET'S GET AWAY FROM HERE!''
The Kentuckians took off running all out, pell-mell , out of the elevator and around the corner into the sanctity of the lobby - bob whites scattering in the brush to evade a hovering, screaming hawk.
The hawk, from management, came hurrying and found me staring as if nonplused into the empty elevator. ``What brought on this commotion?'' he asked.
``Some crowd from Utah,'' I said.
We commonwealths, who once were one, have to stick together.
Leaving Chicago on Friday morning for the airport, with an hour and a half to spare, I found my cab creeping in a kind of moving gridlock away from the city. On the other side of the six-lane interstate, cars were zooming into the city.
``Those leaving are going to jobs outside the city,'' the cabbie explained. That so many liked to live in the city and work outside was a revolutionary notion.
He was from West Africa, he said, and will return at Christmas for two months with his wife and their 14-year-old daughter to visit their families, as he had done two years ago.
A chunky young man in his 30s, he laughed often. Our exchanges proceeded bumpily. His was broken English, and mine was like none he had heard, a cotton-mouth mix of Virginia and Georgia. Each of us kept repeating ourselves.
How had he survived two months without work?
In a thrift store in Chicago, he had come upon a sale of T-shirts and summer shirts. The clerk reduced them further when he offered to buy the lot.
He invested $6,000. Shipment to Africa cost $149. He peddled them to shops for $12,000. Now another $6,000 worth is stashed away.
He drives the cab, he said, while he goes to college.
``I finished English 101 last year, and now I'm enrolling in microbiology and chemistry.''
To sell shirts?
``To become a nurse.''
With the increased income, he will invest in real state. ``And with that money, I will buy mutual funds.''
He would live six months here and six months at home.
And where will you settle upon retiring?
``At home, where I will help my people with what I have earned and learned here.''
He was troubled at the end about my using his name, and I, not wishing to derail a promising entrepreneur, suggested we go without it. He agreed and took my name and address, with the idea, I think, of cutting me in on some big deal.
Something about Chicago breeds enterprise.
I made the plane, barely.
KEYWORDS: DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION 1996 CHICAGO by CNB