"Let the people run the country; whoever's got the biggest gun is the biggest man.... It's the way it oughta be, did fine back then, I don't think it would be bad now....
"I don't think many people would have the choice of being violent if they knew they were gonna end up dead.... Back in the Old West, whoever had the biggest gun was the biggest man. And then, they didn't have very much crime. Look at the crime we have now."
A few hundred yards from Larry Nickerson's store on Highway 202, Bruce Coutu sells antiques and hand-made copper items. The walls of his store are lined with shiny copper lamps and fixtures, and the table by the front counter displays a large assortment of New England firefighter's memorabilia, complete with coffee mugs and beer pitchers. A former employee of the Postal Service, he is now 59 years old. Bruce approaches the collection of colorful flags that rest by the front door, and selects his "recession flag," hanging it outside for all of Epsom to see. An old flier nailed to a wooden post announces a sale commemorating his marital difficulties, which culminated in what Bruce calls "the Great American Divorce." The radio by the desk plays soft dobro music.
"I'll vote for the person come election day.... I honestly feel that there's not one of them that can beat Clinton, not that Clinton's a shining star either....
"They all make promises, and they can't meet those promises that they make when they go to Washington.... They've all got a lost of good points, but you can't put 'em all in one guy, you know, and that's the problem....
"There's a lot of things that everyone's concerned about, whether it be welfare, and abortion's a big issue and all that, but I think more so is, you know, let's, you know, give America back to the Americans, I guess, no matter who they are.... We're a country in trouble...."
Two customers walk in.
"I'm running for president, I have the press here, I'm making a statement.... I'm better than all the others."
[Customer: You probably are!]
David Batchelder sits with his wife Rhonda in a Dunkin' Donuts on the rotary, where patrons openly complain about the no-smoking policy. He and his wife are enjoying a belated Valentine's Day date. Batchelder is locally employed as an electrical engineer. He is a graduate of ultra-liberal Hampshire College, which he now describes as a "communist country." Today he is a self-described anarchist and libertarian. He supports Pat Buchanan.
"I went over to the pizza place once and I stopped in to pick up a pizza, and I wasn't looking to talk to anybody, you know, I was just sitting down. I order my pizza and I'm sitting down at the table waiting for it to get done, you know. So this guy pulls up out front, this is a true story, and he had an old Volkswagen bus.... It was exactly the sort of bus that you'd expect to see Grateful Dead stickers and so forth on the back of. And this guy gets out and he looks like he's in his late twenties or his thirties and he's got long hair and he looks like a hippie, he looks like exactly the kind of person you'd expect to find driving an old Volkswagen bus, and he comes in and orders his pizza, and then just out of the blue this guy strikes up a conversation with the guy who's taking the pizza orders behind the counter about the menace of international communism. So that's the kind of thing that would happen in Epsom....
"It's a very strong individualist ethos here.... There used to be some folks down the road on Route Four they had had that big Trojan horse out on their lawn with a sign in front of it that said 'The U.N. is a Trojan horse in America. Get the U.S. out of the U.N. and the U.N. out of the U.S.' The gal who's most responsible for it's being there has since passed away, but I think they've kind of left it up there in her memory.
"The thing about New Hampshire I've observed is that politics is kind of like the state sport. There's no football teams or basketball teams from New Hampshire so everybody follows politics instead. It's kinda like, almost a form of recreation."