For some reason, I had to make two road trips that weekend.

The year was 2016, the season autumn, and I had to drive west toward Ohio and east toward New York in two days time. Four years later, I remember far less about the purpose of those excursions than the one thing I still cannot forget.

All along our Great Lake Erie, it was what I saw posted along the roadside: Yard signs. Political yard signs. And, what disturbed me as deeply as the moment when the doctor opens his waiting room door and enters, carrying test results in his hand, was what I saw on those signs.

Beyond a mere two or three, from New York across PA to Ohio and back again, they were nearly unanimously emblazoned with the two words which would change our world in ways none of us could have imagined:

TRUMP.PENCE.

For miles. That’s all I saw.

Our city had been pretty determined to honor its long Democratic history by endorsing Hillary. I’d been a Bernie canvassing machine; his name appeared on MY yard sign, up until the election. But, what I saw stunned me with its foreboding. Clearly, everyone who lived on the lakefront – the monied – were a united flank and, that, all across the tri-state area. In fact, after the initial shock had waned, baffled national pundits and analysts would repeatedly point to Northwest PA as one of the pivotal forces which influenced the election results.

I remember getting home on my final return trip, sitting down at the computer, and telling my friends on social media. “I think Trump is going to win.”

Tonight, Michele Obama gave an unprecedented, heartfelt, bold, and pointed declaration to America. She withheld nothing. Our former First Lady told us to prepare to pack a brown bag and put on our old shoes, if that is what it would take to see to it that our vote would be placed, and counted.

When she was finished, I thought about those yard signs. I realized that too many of us, myself included, had let the profuse presence of such signs affect our choices, in primaries past – so many offices, so many contenders, so much reading and listening required to make a truly informed decision. How many had always just depended on yard signs to teach name recognition, to register a subconscious vote already placed before due diligence had been paid.

This November, forget about yard signs. If we see them, consider who put them there and ask whether those lawns were infiltrated by blind folly – or, worse.

Remember 2016. Everybody knows Joe Biden’s name. Keep your eyes on the sign in the sky, and make the only trip necessary. Just vote to save America’s soul.

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8/17/2020 Ruth Ann Scanzillo.