This is Clifford’s grandniece. Another two grandnephews  were on the other corners while Clifford worked out of his station wagon selling Obama paraphernalia. Business was good.

It all started seven months ago after Clifford got out of treatment for the umpteenth time. He had no money, but Obama was campaigning in town and a friend had fronted him two shirts that read, “Change is coming.” A couple of days after he sold the shirts he got his peddler’s license and started hawking them on University Avenue, pulling a little red wagon. Since then he’s sold over a thousand t-shirts, opened a kiosk at Maplewood Mall for the Christmas season that employed a bunch of people, bought two cars, and started a website: http://www.cdodd.com/

“I have a purpose everyday now. It’s a power greater than me,” he says. While selling his wares he had registered over two hundred voters and donated a couple of hundred out of his own pocket to the Obama campaign. Recently he spoke to a class of Hubert Humphrey Job Corps students. He told them that because of Obama, “The ceiling has been taken off. All things are possible now with hard work and initiative.”

His hopes for the Obama administration are that they “allow the average man to look for a better day” by implementing FDR New Deal type programs and to “bring unity.” What doesn’t he what Obama to do? “To think that he knows all the answers. Because therefore he can learn.”