His Kind of Town

"It's like learning to walk with a limp," says Tom Bell. "After a while, you don't even know you're limping."

Tom Bell runs an insurance firm, and the hunt for policyholders has grown more difficult as the years have gone by. Tom Bell is also a childhood friend of Joe Biden's, and the hunt for something to say about politics is not so difficult for him.

Of Obama, Bell says: "He's got to be tougher. He's got feet in both camps. But too often he seems to speak from his Ivy League, Chicago law firm camp." Of his schoolboy pal, Bell says: "Joe Biden represents my type of Democrat." Of Obama, Bell says: "I think sometimes he is, I hate to use this word, too nice." Of Biden, Bell says: "Joe is very well-known and very well-liked in this area." Of Obama, he says: "I think Obama comes across as a little too sophisticated."

And so it goes. Not that Tom Bell isn't for Obama. Of John McCain, he says: "I think something is wrong with him. I'm telling you -- something is wrong with him. Instead of him running for office, everybody should chip in and get him some therapy."

But Bell worries that Democrats have an energy policy "that is imaginary," an insecurity about their identity that is palpable, and not enough fight in them. "I'm very worried about this election," he says. "It would be hard for the Democrats to blow this election. And you know what? They're doing it."

Scranton was Biden's first stop after the Democratic National Convention, just as it was Kerry's first stop in 2004. He spent the afternoon at his old home on North Washington Avenue, a two-story gray Colonial with black shutters and a carpeted porch, now owned by Anne Kearns. It was here that the young Biden and his family lived with his grandparents, the Finnegans.

Biden spent nearly three hours with Kearns and her family and neighbors and a smattering of politicos, speaking in the back yard, where grilled hot dogs and hamburgers were served. Biden at one point was led up to the attic, where the bed he slept in as a boy had been kept all these years. "You're kidding me?" he said. At the request of the Kearnses, he signed his name on the wall with the inscription: "I am home."

Kearns was reflecting on this visit the other day, thinking that Obama is going to make it, with Joe's help. She is still the only one with an Obama yard sign in the neighborhood. Having taught for 20 years at Marywood University in the neighborhood, she has learned to listen to the kids. "When I saw all the young people going for him, I thought: That's what this country needs. I saw something new in Obama."

Jim Kennedy sat on the porch of the home he grew up in and spoke of the old. He was facing Kearns's back yard, with his white, blue-striped pants hiked up, pointing to the paved street that was once a dirt alley. That's where he and Joe played growing up. "For entertainment, we used to take popsicle sticks and weave them together and make rafts and sail them down the gutter in heavy rain. It was fun, man. It was fun."

Kennedy is an elected magistrate judge with an eighth-grade education, one of the city's colorful characters, now in his 33rd year on the bench. A record, he notes. He has remained a good friend of Biden's, and doesn't hesitate to tell all the childhood stories: about Joe's stuttering problems, about eating Joe's ice cream when Joe got his tonsils removed, about Joe's crush on the blonde next door.

Kennedy would sometimes pin Joe down and put spit on his hairy arms and rub the hair hard and make it curl up. "Little small ways of getting him." The sum of Kennedy's message: Joe is tough, authentic, irrepressible. Excellent vice presidential material. And most important, a real, native son.

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