July 4, 2007
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa -- Hillary and Bill Clinton were exiting the Waypoint Madge Phillips Center for homeless women and their families in downtown Cedar Rapids, and bar owner Gary Cooper was trying to make a new customer.
"Bill, come over and have a free beer!" said Cooper, who was holding court and a brew of his own outside his Coopacabana, across the street from Waypoint.
The former president, casually attired in a black polo shirt, blue jeans and cowboy boots, smiled and waved. But he never moved toward the bar. Instead, he got into a vehicle with his wife the presidential candidate, and left almost two hours before downtown's annual Fourth of July fireworks extravaganza that always attracts several thousand people.
From a porch on an old house on Sixth Street SE, about 15 African-Americans quietly observed the Clintons and their support staff as they slowly made their way from Waypoint to their cars. That may have been more blacks than were in the crowd of several hundred at Clinton's campaign stop a block away at Green Square Park. But no one among the young and old people on that porch had anything negative to say about Sen. Clinton or her husband.
"Everybody on this porch, I imagine, is a Democrat,'' said 62-year-old retiree Charles Cook of Cedar Rapids. "I vote. I sure do.
"I like Hillary, yes. Because her husband did a good job. He sure did. I believe she'd be a great president. Women run the country, anyway. She's a smart lady. She's a very smart lady. That's what we need. We need someone to work for working people.
"That other guy is talking a good game, but he'll never make it. What's his name?''
Obama, someone else on the porch told him.
"I feel like Hillary has a chance to win it. I don't believe (Obama) has a chance.''
When asked his feelings about President Bush, Cook look like he bit into something sour.
"Ohhhh, he caused a whole lot of trouble for this country. I've got nephews and nieces in Iraq right now. Yes sir, I sure do. And I don't know for what, really. No, no Bush."
Cook left Tennessee in 1966 to take a job in Iowa., and stayed.
"Now you see all the jobs leaving here to go South,'' he sighed. "It used to be that all kinds of jobs were in Cedar Rapids. No more.''
Cook had no interest in walking the four or five blocks it would have taken to join the masses at the fireworks display. Much like he didn't want to be in the throng at the Clinton rally, which was just a block or so from that porch.
"You get too close, you can't really see them,'' he said.
He was talking about the fireworks. I think.