Save it. I’ve heard it before.
My home state has been the butt of so many jokes - at least, of jokes directed my way - that I can’t help but puff up at its sudden prominence with Barack Obama’s choice of Delaware Sen. Joe Biden as his running mate.
For the many, many people out there who apparently know so little about my little state, here’s a quick primer.
Yep, it’s tiny.
Its 1,982 square miles would fit within Missoula County, with plenty of room left to spare. Delaware is just short of 100 miles long, 35 miles across at its widest point, and only nine at the narrow end. Only Rhode Island is smaller. This makes it useful for comparison purposes, as in “Since the 1930s, Louisiana has lost about 1,900 square miles of coastal land - an area about the size of Delaware.” That, compliments of the Washington Post, a paper published in a region whose residents wash across Delaware’s beaches each summer like Canadians pouring into Glacier National Park.
Somehow, about 860,000 people squeeze themselves into Delaware’s confines, only about 100,000 fewer than are scattered across Montana’s vast spaces. To give you an idea of just how crowded Delaware is, 320 people are packed into each square mile, as opposed to about six here.
Delaware is flat. I’m talking pancake. It has the lowest highest point in the nation, just 447 feet. That won’t even get you all the way to the “M” on Mount Sentinel. Lowest point? Sea level and below. I grew up on a wildlife refuge along the Delaware Bay, and during storms, high tides would flood our lane, cutting the house off from the main road.
It’s buggy. I’d rather face a backcountry griz any day than the mosquitoes and razor-jawed greenhead flies swarming out of those coastal marshes.
But the eating is easy. I can work myself into weepiness over memories of Delaware peaches and cantaloupes (sorry, Dixon), blue crabs steamed in Old Bay and beer, and most of all, the pale, sweet kernels of Silver Queen corn. Garrison Keillor wrote an essay about sweet corn being better than sex, but the fact that he was referring to Minnesota corn marked him as tragically inexperienced.
The mascot of the University of Delaware (my very recent alma mater, thanks to five credits from the University of Montana) is - wait for it - a chicken. The Fighting Blue Hens, if you please. Blue hen chickens were gamecocks carried by Revolutionary War troops from Delaware known for their feistiness - both the birds and the troops.
Some trivia: It’s the only state east of the Mason-Dixon line, thanks to the line being drawn to divide Pennsylvania (North) from Maryland (South). In the Civil War, Delaware was a Union state with Confederate sympathies. My mother was educated in segregated schools; integration was only a few years old by the time I started first grade.
All of that aside, there are enough similarities between Delaware and Montana that this state immediately felt like home. Folks may live farther apart here, but everybody still knows everybody else in a way that reminds me of my childhood. Delawareans meet their politicians face to face - indeed, they expect to - just as Montanans do. In both states, it’s possible to bump into our governor and members of Congress on the street.
In a bit of political cross-cultural exchange, Biden counts Montana’s Mike Mansfield as a mentor, and longtime Delaware Sen. Bill Roth (thank him for Roth IRAs) grew up in Helena.
Both states have just three electoral votes. I just listened to a commentator refer to Biden being from “a small, electorally insignificant state.”
Ahem. I don’t know how much time Obama has spent in Delaware, but if his obsession with Montana is any indication, three votes are hardly insignificant this year.
As in Montana, the state is fairly closely divided between Democrats and Republicans with a sizeable unaffiliated contingent, although Democrats have gained an edge in Delaware in recent years.
The lively dynamic in both states is going to make November particularly enjoyable for a political junkie like me. But now that Delaware is - in its typically tiny way - in the mix, I’ve got to figure out a bet with somebody who still lives there; a bet that will, if I win, result in a bushel of Silver Queen being sent my way. A Montana girl can dream.
Gwen Florio, the Missoulian’s assistant city editor, grew up in Smyrna, Delaware.
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