Anthony Pritchard
Well-Known Member
The Campaign Trail
Back in the early 1980s, 1982 if memory serves me a good turn, I served as Assistant Campaign Manager for a candidate running for the United States Senate. We knew from the beginning that victory would be difficult. Our opponent was so entrenched that he had gone years without facing serious opposition. As expected, we lost.
What I remember most, however, is not Election Day.
Our candidate had lost his right leg above the knee and wore a prosthetic leg of the older style, secured with leather straps and buckles. One day, all the candidates gathered for a media event in an open field. Two farm hay wagons had been pulled together to serve as a makeshift platform. The major television networks were there, along with candidates for various offices.
Each candidate was given a chance to walk across the field for the cameras before climbing onto the wagons. Our entire campaign entourage was making the trip together when disaster struck.
Without warning, our man stepped into a hole.
Down he went.
I caught him as he fell. His prosthetic leg did not.
There, standing proudly upright in the middle of the field, was his detached leg while the cameras looked on.
I grabbed it and began desperately trying to shove it back up his pant leg. He stopped me immediately.
"No, no, no. We have to take the pants off first!"
The staff quickly formed a human circle around us while I fumbled with straps, buckles, pants, and prosthetic parts.
Then he started shouting, "My sock! My sock!"
I replied, perhaps not as helpfully as I imagined at the time, "You don't have a foot!"
What he meant, of course, was the sock that fit over the stump of his leg.
Somehow we got everything back in working order. The leg was reattached, the pants restored, and we continued our walk across the field as though nothing at all had happened.
To their credit, the television crews never aired the footage.
Later that evening, back at campaign headquarters, the tension finally broke. The entire office erupted in laughter. The loudest laughter came from the candidate himself.
We lost the election.
But more than forty years later, that is not what I remember.
I remember a detached prosthetic leg standing proudly in a field, a frantic rescue operation, and a candidate who could laugh at himself better than anyone else in the room.
Sometimes those are the moments worth keeping.
~Tony
© A.K. Pritchard, 2026
Back in the early 1980s, 1982 if memory serves me a good turn, I served as Assistant Campaign Manager for a candidate running for the United States Senate. We knew from the beginning that victory would be difficult. Our opponent was so entrenched that he had gone years without facing serious opposition. As expected, we lost.
What I remember most, however, is not Election Day.
Our candidate had lost his right leg above the knee and wore a prosthetic leg of the older style, secured with leather straps and buckles. One day, all the candidates gathered for a media event in an open field. Two farm hay wagons had been pulled together to serve as a makeshift platform. The major television networks were there, along with candidates for various offices.
Each candidate was given a chance to walk across the field for the cameras before climbing onto the wagons. Our entire campaign entourage was making the trip together when disaster struck.
Without warning, our man stepped into a hole.
Down he went.
I caught him as he fell. His prosthetic leg did not.
There, standing proudly upright in the middle of the field, was his detached leg while the cameras looked on.
I grabbed it and began desperately trying to shove it back up his pant leg. He stopped me immediately.
"No, no, no. We have to take the pants off first!"
The staff quickly formed a human circle around us while I fumbled with straps, buckles, pants, and prosthetic parts.
Then he started shouting, "My sock! My sock!"
I replied, perhaps not as helpfully as I imagined at the time, "You don't have a foot!"
What he meant, of course, was the sock that fit over the stump of his leg.
Somehow we got everything back in working order. The leg was reattached, the pants restored, and we continued our walk across the field as though nothing at all had happened.
To their credit, the television crews never aired the footage.
Later that evening, back at campaign headquarters, the tension finally broke. The entire office erupted in laughter. The loudest laughter came from the candidate himself.
We lost the election.
But more than forty years later, that is not what I remember.
I remember a detached prosthetic leg standing proudly in a field, a frantic rescue operation, and a candidate who could laugh at himself better than anyone else in the room.
Sometimes those are the moments worth keeping.
~Tony
© A.K. Pritchard, 2026
