Obama Rally in Jacksonville, Florida, Draws Diverse Crowd

On Saturday, my wife, my son and I went to a Barack Obama campaign event in Jacksonville, Florida, where we live. We got up early and decided to make a day of it. It's the first time either my wife or I had every participated in this way, we have donated money before but that has been about the extent of it.

We brought our son along because we thought it would be good for him to see Barack in Person, maybe witness history as it happens. The event start time was 2:30 but they opened the gates at around 12:30 pm.

We left our house around 10 hoping to get a good spot, stopped off to get film for my wife's camera and made our way down to Metro Park where the event was being held.

The traffic wasn't as bad as I had expected it to be, but that didn't last for long the closer we got the worse it got. Going to a Barack Obama event is almost like going to a rock concert. I was struck by the mixture of the people. There we're of course young people, and African American people, but there were also seas of elderly and middle class white people.

Spanish people , Asian people, hippie's, people who looked like they might work in an office, gay people, straight people, it seemed like almost everyone from no matter what walk of life you represent was there, I was amazed, All wearing Obama tee shirts, buttons, and hats.

The atmosphere was charged and up beat, vendors selling bottled water for a dollar and Obama merchandise weaved their way through the crowd the merchandise was surprisingly affordable and going fast.

By the time, we were in line there was already thousands of people ahead of us. I don't know if it was intentional or not, but they had the long line moving along under an interstate to keep us out of the 90 degree heat. At certain checkpoints along the line, there were police officers there just in chase of trouble, but there wasn't any.

The staff moved back and forth through the line handing out voter registration cards, pens, what ever you needed to get the cards filled out.

The closer we got to the entrance the excitement was palpable. You could see the pride beaming from older black men who never thought that they would see the day that this would even be possible. I have to admit even I felt a sense of closeness and pride with these men, an optimism for my young son future. Finally, we made our way through the checkpoint and medal detectors, no bags umbrellas.

My wife was carrying an umbrella and was told in no certain terms she either had to toss it in the trash or take it back to our car...we tossed it. As we entered I was surprised to hear them asking people to turn on there cell phones.

As we made our way toward the grassy field where the crowd was gathering the smell of barbeque was wafting through the air, candy apples were on sell, soft drinks, like I mention it had the feel of an outdoor concert.

We made our way down and I have to admit we got a lot closer to the stage then I had expected to. We waited in the sun for nearly two hours listening to music over the loud speakers, and several speakers, and McCain/ Palin banner flew over had a few times to the chores of loud boos.

I thought it was a classless move by the McCain camp. At about 3:15 pm a black bus pulled up and the crowd went crazy. There was a prayer, then the pledge allegiance to the flag, and a few minutes later Barack Obama appeared on stage to the roar of the crowd.

It was a standard stump speech he talked about health care, the state of the economy, tax cuts for the middle class, he talked about his mother, he even ripped into McCain a lot more to the delight of the crowd, he never mentioned Gov. Palin.

He spoke for a little under and hour it was a great experience for the whole family, my son couldn't wait to get back to school so that he could tell all his friends that he got a chance to see Barack Obama in person.