Monumental Wheelbarrow Ride following Election Bet

   Thomas "Tucker" Callan and Thomas Fisher of Caledonia, good friends and fiercely loyal Americans, recreated a scene right out of the history books last week. The two had a handshake bet on the 2008 presidential election. The loser would have to push the winner around Soldiers’ Monument in Caledonia – in a wheelbarrow. The two were recreating the very same scenario as it occurred in Caledonia in 1948 during the Truman – Dewey election.

   The wheelbarrow ride drew a sizeable crowd at the monument around 8 a.m. on November 7, just three days after Fisher’s choice candidate, Senator Barack Obama was elected president, defeating Callan’s candidate, Senator John McCain.

   Fisher, a Vietnam veteran, says he voted for Obama because he thinks the country needs new ideas for change and he says, Sarah Palin was not qualified to be vice-president.

   Callan voted for McCain but says it’s now time to put partisan politics behind us, roll our sleeves up and start working together. That is exactly what the two men did as the loser, Callan, pushed his friend, Fisher, for the first length of the wheelbarrow ride around the monument before they stopped and switched places.

   "I want to show that the Democrats are ready and willing to work with the Republicans," said Fisher.

   Callan looked toward Soldiers’ Monument and was reminded of the price veterans have paid in order to give Americans the right to freely participate in an election.

   "This monument reminds me of the soldiers who have fought so that we can have our first amendment right of freedom of speech. We’re always going to have disagreements but now it’s time to come together as a nation for the betterment of America. This monument is the place to do this because it represents those who died so that we can have these freedoms," commented Callan.

   Mary Cullinan was among the spectators who gathered at the monument to watch history in the making. She was also at the 1948 wheelbarrow ride.

   "I was ten years old and I remember my mother getting a phone call to get up to the monument and watch it. I just had to come for this one," Cullinan remarked.

   That year in Caledonia, two civic-minded citizens, Fernando Bonacquisti and Max Grant, waged a bet on the outcome of the presidential election between the Democratic incumbent Harry S. Truman and his Republican challenger, Thomas Dewey. "Bonnie," as he was called, picked Truman, the underdog as his candidate; Grant bet on the sure thing – Dewey.

   President Truman waged his campaign bid for reelection against Dewey and the media, who persecuted him for his stand on civil rights and his proposal to Congress guaranteeing the rights of blacks. That proposal split the Democratic Party and caused the media to declare that Dewey was, without a doubt, going to be elected the next president of the United States of America. As history teaches, Truman won the election, proving that dependence on public polls and media reporting can be a fatal flaw. Perhaps it was Truman’s forward-thinking stand on civil rights in 1948 that may have opened the door for Senator Obama to become the first African-American United States president 60 years later.