Driven by zeal

Granny -- and her monkey -- are gung-ho for Ron Paul

MARTINSVILLE, Va. -- Those of us with an appreciation for cliches would surely use one to describe Linda Hunnicutt, what with her voice worn by that nicotine habit, her stories involving guns and government, and her ability to say anything to anyone, at any time, social niceties be damned.

She believes:

That it's scary, this stuff they're teaching kids in school today.

That you should honk if you speak English.

That Ron Paul, a physician who graduated from Duke University's medical school and a Republican congressman from Texas, would make a good president.

She believes this with so much fervor that she painted an RV red, white and blue, plastered Paul's face on it and drove it from North Carolina to New Hampshire. And Iowa. And South Carolina. And Texas. And here, to the Martinsville Speedway, where she hopes to turn some NASCAR fans on to the magic of "Dr. Paul."

Additionally, and not unimportantly, she has a monkey. And her monkey drinks beer.

By now you've probably figured it out.

Hunnicutt is one feisty old broad.

She is 67 years old, she is funny and she lives in Leicester, outside Asheville, with her husband, Tim, and her monkey, Buddy.

It would be easy to build this story around Buddy, seeing as how monkeys are so dang cool. But that would be a disservice to Hunnicutt's tale, even as it owes much to the 13-year-old capuchin monkey.

A couple of years ago, Hunnicutt heard about a bill proposed in Congress that would prohibit the sale of "nonhuman primates." This irked her to no end, and she and a girlfriend from Texas, a fellow monkey owner, traveled to Washington D.C. to attend a committee meeting on the proposed legislation.

They dressed for the occasion. "We were decked out, buddy," says Hunnicutt, who remembers wearing heels and a girdle.

But they couldn't find the correct meeting room. Tired and distressed, they eventually asked a man who "looked like he was somebody" for help. He walked them to the right place, and the women handed over some documents to the committee. Whether these ladies had anything to do with it or not, that bill died.

It can be noted here that Hunnicutt's RV, at one time, had "PETA Sucks" painted on it. This was back in the days when she routinely drove it to protest the protests organized by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. It was during a PETA protest that she and her girlfriend were dubbed the "Granny Warriors" by a Virginia television reporter.

If you're wondering, Hunnicutt has time for this because she no longer works.

So she's retired, then?

"Retired, retarded, whatever," Hunnicutt says, laughing.

Maybe this self-deprecating stuff is related to the fact that she's spending her time, energy and available credit on the campaign of a man who, according to anyone who is supposed to know anything about politics, has a monkey's chance in Reno of becoming the president of the United States.

That somebody who looked like somebody in D.C. turned out to be Paul. After returning home and figuring out who he was and that he was considering a campaign for president, she wrote him a long letter asking him to run. By this time she had done plenty of reading on the man and decided that his ideas about immigration and limited government align with her own.

Paul is against amnesty for illegal immigrants. He's against the Iraq war. A strict constitutionalist, he's against gun control. He wants to abolish the Federal Reserve.

His views and morals, Hunnicutt says, fit the way she was raised.

She wants Paul to be president because she wants a better future for her grandchildren.