Have you ever been caught in a situation that was so crazy that your mind couldn't process what was happening? That is exactly how I was feeling when the realization of where I had ended up sunk into my brain. Two hours ago I was in my apartment with my friends, playing video games and having fun. Now I was standing on the outskirts of a ghetto, partnered with some kid I didn't know, and my only hope of getting back home was to walk around to different houses and tell people to vote for some guy I didn't support, which at the very least would take us about four hours, all for a "whopping" fifty dollars! "HOW DO I GET MYSELF INTO THESE SITUATIONS?" was all I kept repeating in my head.
Thank God my friend Dave didn't take up my offer to join or he probably would have murdered me on the spot. My partner and I decided it would be best to get started as soon as possible. We took out our maps and checked to see where we should go first. According to our maps, he had the first closest house. So we walked down the road to arrive at a house that was completely surrounded and hidden by a fence. Before my partner could even get to the entrance a big dog smacked up against the fence and started barking. He turned to me and said "I'm going to just check this one off on the list and write "not home"". "Fine with me." I replied. So we just decided to continue walking until we got into the area I was supposed to go.
The first house that I walked up to was quite small. It was so small that when I got onto the porch I had to duck my head to fit under the covering that they had over top. Just for the record I'm 5 feet 10 inches standing. The top of the front door stopped just under my chin. I turned to my partner with a WTF look on my face. "Dude" he said "If a midget comes walking out of that door I'm going to burst out laughing". I knocked on the door to see if anybody was home. After no response I tried again and again no one answered. "Do you think I should put the papers on the ground?" I asked. "Yea" he replied "Just leave them there and write down that they aren't home". So I did and we moved on.
I would say that 90% of the total houses that we stopped at during our whole time there had nobody home. To save time I'm going to skip over most of the houses and only tell you about the events that really stick out in my memory. One of the earlier houses I stopped at was surrounded by a gate and had piles of junk spread out on the front lawn. I walked up, opened up the gate and stepped through.
As I was walking I heard footsteps from behind me. I turned around to find my partner following me. "What are you doing?" I asked. "Following behind you" he answered. "Why?" I asked. "I don't know" he answered "I thought you might need me if someone comes out of the door and pulls a gun on you?" After giving it some thought I responded "OK, do what you want." I cautiously approached the door, but I still highly doubted that I was going to get a gun pulled on me. I knocked on the door to find that nobody was home. So I left the fliers and checked off the house on my map.
At one point we decided to split up so that we could cover more ground on the same street. But when I got to the end of my route I realized that we didn't pick a location to meet at. To make matters worse, it never occurred to us to exchange cell phone numbers. I walked for a little bit to see if I could find him. I soon started yelling his name to see if he might hear me. I could care less if I was bothering the locals, I did not want to be lost on my own. Luckily, we soon found each other and exchanged numbers.
There were many times that we got lost and had to find our way back on route. In some cases we would end up walking in one big circle. As we realized how long this was taking we made a special agreement. The agreement was that if it started getting dark and we had a lot of flyers left, we would trash the ones we had and call the guy in the van to pick us up. At one point when we were walking down the road when we saw that we had to go into a back ally in order to reach one of the houses. The ally had rundown houses and fences covering the sides.
As I started to walk forward I noticed that my partner wasn't following. I turned and asked him if he was coming or not. "Are you nuts?" he asked "I'm not going down there". Ignoring his fears I made my way towards the house we were supposed to go to. I didn't see anybody around, but I kept my ears and eyes open. Again nobody was home so I left the flyer on their door step. I than walked out, occasionally looking over my shoulder to see if anybody was behind me. My partner almost looked shocked that I made it back to the streets unharmed.
At one time we had to back track and had to make our way through a police parking lot. As we were walking an officer opened the back door and yelled at us to see what we were doing. I yelled back that we were walking around and telling people to vote for the election. After more questioning we were able to continue on our way. As the day wore on we started splitting up to cover more ground. Each of us would take a side of a street and meet up down the road.
At one point when we meet up he had a weird look on his face. After asking him what had happened he explained that at one of the houses he tried knocking on the door to get someone's attention, but they wouldn't answer him. As he was about to leave a person opened the door up to see who he was. According to him the reason that the person didn't open the door sooner was because they thought he was the police.
A disturbing moment for me was one of the few times that someone opened the door for me. I remember I knocked on a persons door and a man answered. All over his face he had red scabs and bumps. I thought he might have some type of disease so I quickly gave the man the flyer, while trying not to touch his hand. I got out away from that guy as fast as possible.
Finally, we made it to the last few locations that were at an apartment complex. At this point the sun was starting to go down so I made the run for the apartments while he dialed for our driver in the van. As expected nobody was home at the apartments so I just left them the information. I than met my partner on the sidewalk. "Where's the van?" I asked. My partner explained that the van was on it's way. The driver just had to pick up another group that had finished before us.
As we waited, the sun fell out of view and the night took over. I don't know if it was exhaustion, but I wasn't scarred of the idea that him and I were alone in the ghetto at night. Soon we got a call on the phone. We picked it up to find that it was our driver calling us. "Where are you guys at?" he asked. We explained that we were at the last house location on the map. Apparently my partner and I were supposed to meet the driver at the same location that we had been dropped off at.
With difficulty we managed to give our driver directions to that he could find us. He arrived with two other members in the van. We eagerly hopped in and sat back for the ride. I noticed that the girl who had ended up in the bad area looked fine. Both our groups exchanged stories about what had happened. We than picked up the third group and made our way back to the lot. As we pulled into the lot I thought to myself "it's finally over". Oh, how wrong I was. This story will be concluded in the next post.
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