The following are, for the most part, Ohio journal entries from our book (in progress), [The Back Road to the White House (Average Joe & the Making of an American President, in Progress].

APRIL 15, 1999
I hadn't told anybody in Ripley yet I was going to run for president. I wanted it to be a surprise. (And I wanted to be able to walk down the street without being laughed at.) I mentioned it in the Main St. Cafe earlier this week. You don't even have to put an item in the local paper here for everyone to know it. You just have to say something in the Main St. Cafe.

First-term Ripley City Council member Rick Hughes stopped by today. He said he'd heard what I was doing and had some advice. He said part of his campaign was knocking on every door in the town between August and November.

"In your case, you should have started in 1960," he said.

MAY 2, 1999
All you have to do to run for president is stand up in public somewhere and say you're running for president. I did that yesterday at the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. Joseph, 18 months, was in a pack on my back. Sarah, 3, was holding her mom's hand.

I said I was running as a "concerned parent." The Columbine shootings had happened just a few days before. I said it's important for America to realize these types of shootings don't happen in a vacuum. I said the answer to Littleton, and all over the country actually, is not merely to increase school security; but look to increasing, and improving, parenting techniques, youth social skills (conflict resolution, for one), neighborhood and school solidity.

I said this all to one person. No press.

But Elizabeth Moberly, a friend from the nearby suburb of Upper Darby, said it was the best declaration speech she had ever heard. It was a start.

MAY 7, 1999
A couple of weeks later, I gave a campaign speech at Rodney Square in downtown Wilmington, Del. I set up near the street and gave not so much a "prosperity message," as I did a common sense one. I said a story in Wilmington's The News Journal the day before noted that there has never been a society with more prosperity than the U.S.

Yeah, we've got a lot of stuff, I said, but we're spending so much time these days working to get stuff, then using the stuff, then 'polishing' the stuff. Consequently, we've got less and less time for the spouse, the kids, our neighbors. I urged people to consider the "Voluntary Simplicity" movement, an emerging trend aimed at cutting back on material stuff, creating more time for family, for community.

I talked to 15, maybe 20 times more people that day than were at the declaration. That is, I talked to them until their bus showed up.

We got our first press coverage here, too. Just before the event, a local radio news reporter looked at my rather well-worn flannel shirt, then at the'74 van. His first question: "So, what's an average Joe like you doing running for president?" [The "average Joe" would stick.]