YOU CAN GO HOME AGAIN

By RICHARD STENGEL/RUSSELL

BOB DOLE'S COMING TO TOWN, and you'd expect things to be jumping at Banker's Mercantile on Main Street, the store where he bought his first blue campaign suit in 1952 and had it fitted specially for his shattered shoulder. Instead, the place is near empty, except for Joey Ramsey, 17, who is outfitting himself for an event more important than the arrival of Russell's favorite son: the prom. He orders tuxedo model No. 877, the white double-breasted jacket with a black shawl collar. Ramsey, a quiet junior who also works afternoons at McDonald's, isn't all that excited about Dole's visit. "I guess if we get out of school, that'd be pretty good," he says, eyes stapled to the floor.

Dean Banker, a jolly fellow whose grandfather started the store in 1881, remembers the Senator's first suit. "We had to pad the heck out of it," says Banker, "and shorten the right sleeve. We had a Dutch tailor who was a master." Banker has more than an inkling of what Dole went through--he himself spent three months in a German prison camp after being captured in 1944 near Strasbourg. Banker wouldn't miss Monday's rally for the world. Dole has described his campaign as "one last mission"--and the Old Guard of Russell is signing on one more time.

In many ways these are the two faces of Russell, Kansas: old and settled vs. young and restless; proud and enthusiastic vs. proud and indifferent. Robert Frost said home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in. Russell always takes Bob Dole in--and doesn't mind vouching every few years for the fact that he has roots somewhere besides his Senate office. But in its regular testimony for Dole, Russell offers up a curious mixture of honor, pleasure and a touch of resentment.

Dole's birthplace is a quiet oil and farming area that has always known adversity, a flatlander town on the interstate, with lovely old limestone buildings in the center and tar-paper mobile homes at the edges. Its flat skyline is dominated by stately white grain silos.

On the eve of Dole's visit Russell has had a crime wave: a gang of kids opened four fire hydrants on Main Street. This is a place where people still leave their keys in the car, but the battered pickup is likely to have more than 100,000 miles on it. Per capita income is only $15,500 a year, $4,300 below the state average. You won't meet an unfriendly or inhospitable soul in Russell, but the population is definitely aging and shrinking. The median age is 41, and Russell has about 4,800 citizens, down from more than 7,000 in 1980. There's a new wheat-processing plant nearby that employs 40 people, but Russell lost hundreds of jobs to the oil slump of 10 years ago. "People moved to where the jobs were," says Ned Webb, Russell County's economic-development director. "Bob Dole may be the Senate majority leader, but I can tell you there's no pork laying around Russell."

On Stag Night at the Russell Veterans of Foreign Wars post, 150 men congregate for a dinner of sausage and potatoes and two games of bingo. The men are mostly burly and white haired. The talk is of the price of oil and wheat--both too low. Larry Campbell is a Vietnam vet, and he's angry, but not at Bob Dole. "I make $10,000 a year," he says, "but I'm not complaining. You just have to accept things here. I'm a red-neck conservative, more conservative than Bob Dole. But he's my hero." The V.F.W. is host of a barbecue for Dole this week, and the vets are proud to play their part, even though they can't exactly point to anything Bob Dole has done for Russell, except to come from it. "He's one of our own," says Norman Staab, a former national commander of the V.F.W.--and that's enough.

The Clinton-Gore bumper sticker on Nancy Lane's Plymouth stands out in Russell. She has been teaching government at Russell High since 1964. So, are the students enlisting in Bob Dole's last mission? "They're proud and pleased," she says and then pauses. "Now they don't talk about Dole being old, but they like the fact that Clinton seems young." C.J. Mahoney, the fresh-faced student-council president at Russell High, observes, "All the kids support Bob Dole, but they don't really know why. Bob Dole is a bit distant from us."

For Dole, Russell serves a dual purpose. It is the most effective backdrop for his election commercials, but it is also a kind of emotional refueling stop, the one place where, as his sister Gloria says, "he can find comfort." The house at 1035 North Maple, where Dole grew up (and which he now owns), has been empty since the day his mother died in 1983. The neat spice rack in the kitchen still holds the cinnamon she sprinkled on Sunday-morning pancakes. Gloria shows off Bob's old room and points to a wooden clothes stand. "That's where he hangs his suit," she says. "He'll probably have a quick nap here when he comes."

Every morning the Old Guard gathers at Meridy's restaurant for coffee and liar's poker. After losing the first round, Everett Dumler, who was a senior at Russell High when Dole was a freshman, consults his list from the Dole campaign of things to get ready. He's a little worried about the "balloon rise" and the "bows on poles," but he has done it before. "He's never forgotten us," Dumler says. And these men can never forget him, or else they too may be forgotten.