POLITICS ’88 : CAMPAIGN ’88 : Odd Mementoes Mark the Campaign’s Trail

Campaigning for President is a strange and wondrous thing, often requiring candidates to don unusual costumes, accept odd gifts or perform peculiar tasks.

During the New Hampshire primary, for example, Democratic candidate Michael S. Dukakis appeared grateful--if puzzled--when Manchester police officials gave him a token of their esteem: A large brick from their old building. In West Virginia, he got a lump of coal.

Dukakis has donned T-shirts, a sombrero, baseball caps, hard hats, cowboy hats and other local apparel. But aides still treasure the memory and photos of Dukakis in a white, hooded, head-to-toe protective suit while he toured a dust-free computer-chip lab in Rochester, N.Y. He looked, several aides agreed, suspiciously like a character out of Woody Allen’s film, “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex.”

For all that, Dukakis never had to autograph a melon until he got to Orange County, Calif. On Thursday night, he toured the Beckman Laser Institute in Irvine, and officials invited him and his wife, Kitty, to sign their names on a honeydew with a 20-watt carbon dioxide laser.

As the melon sizzled and smoked, Dukakis looked up in his protective glasses and opined: “This may be the first melon in history that’s a collector’s item.”

By Friday, Dukakis was down to more earthly pursuits. As he flew to Albuquerque for an outdoor rally, the candidate who keeps boasting that he has balanced nine state budgets tried to balance his own. He pored over his checkbook, paying bills and scribbling figures as he flew.