Politics in the real world

Richard Muñoz was sitting on a metal folding chair outside the Big Tire Shop on Blue Hill Avenue in Roxbury. It was sunny and he was surrounded by friends, and the only thing he didn't have on this glorious day was enough customers.

"It's slow, man," he said. "Real slow."

Muñoz was wearing jeans, a hoodie, and a Michael Jordan baseball cap with the price tag still hanging off it. You would think the big red sign attached to the chain-link fence of his repair shop touting the desperate candidacy of Senator Dianne Wilkerson means that Richard Muñoz is a big Dianne Wilkerson fan.

"I don't even know who she is," Muñoz said, pointing to the sign and shrugging. "Some guy asked me if he could put it up and I said, 'Sure.' But I never heard of her. I don't vote."

Richard Muñoz is 24 years old, and he opened the Big Tire Shop two years ago. He doesn't care about politics and doesn't believe any politician can deliver to him what he needs more than a handshake and a campaign promise, and that is people who have real cash money in their pockets.

Raymond Ortiz was sitting next to Richard Muñoz.

He is 17, a skinny kid with a friendly face, and he helps around the shop after school at Hyde Park High.

Wilkerson has been his state senator since he was 2 years old, but Raymond Ortiz shook his head and stared blankly at the sign.

He's never heard of Sonia Chang-Diaz, the upstart who upset Wilkerson in the Democratic primary, either.

He wants to go to college, to study mechanical engineering.

"He's good with anything like that," Muñoz was saying. "But you can't go to college if you skip school."

Raymond Ortiz rolled his eyes and Richard Muñoz laughed.

"The only names I ever heard of is McCain and Obama and Bush," the teenager said. "Everybody's saying Obama's gonna win but everybody I know thinks somebody's gonna kill him."

Richard Muñoz nodded.

"He ain't gonna last long," Muñoz said. "They'll get to him, somehow."

David Beasley is 23 years old and manages a parking garage.

He was getting his tires fixed and he didn't disagree with Muñoz and Ortiz. They don't want any harm to befall Barack Obama.

But they can't help feeling the way they feel.

"A lot of people think that," Beasley said, stuffing his hands in his pockets and looking down, as if there were nothing more to say.

Along Blue Hill Avenue, from Franklin Park all the way down to Dudley Street, there is as much a sense of foreboding as there is any real sense of pride that a black man could very well be elected president of the United States.

People who care little about the political world know the real world all too well and take no comfort in that knowledge.

A guy Richard Muñoz knows walked up with a month-old pit bull. It looked like a stuffed animal and it lolled almost lifeless in his arms.

"Her name's Niña," Muñoz said. "Like 'little girl.' "

On the sidewalk, beyond the fence, a guy in his 20s walked by with a 40-ounce peeking out of a brown paper bag.

Across the street, an old man wearing a straw hat with a wide brim labored under the weight of a bag of groceries he just bought at the Blue Hill Superette.

Richard Muñoz called out in Spanish and the old man put his bag down on the sidewalk, removed his hat with a flourish, and bowed deeply.

Muñoz chuckled and then said, "I don't care who gets elected, as long as they can make the economy better. If it's Obama, it's Obama."

An ambulance raced by and Richard Muñoz had to wait for the siren's wail to fade before he could finish his thought.

"I just hope they don't kill him," he said.

Kevin Cullen is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at cullen@globe.com.