While the primary proved important enough to inspire normally ambivalent people to overcome their natural voter torpor and kick in like good Americans, not everyone was moved to vote.
In blue-collar Bristol, Trish Duff, a middle-age woman who had stepped outside from her job at the Dollar Store to take a cigarette break, announced that she was pulling for Clinton to win, but wasn't pulling a lever. "I don't vote," Duff said. "I haven't voted - ever."
She stated it as a basic and unalterable fact of her life, and didn't think to offer a reason. On a day of hope and unparalleled civic involvement, it seemed almost like blasphemy.
Still, Duff said that she would like to see a woman become president, and that she thought Clinton could do something to help people struggling to pay their bills. "The economy is bad," Duff said. "The war is bad, but the economy is worse."
In Center City, Craig Quillen, a 55-year-old homeless man who had spent Monday night at an overnight cafe for the homeless at 32d and Spring Garden Streets, wouldn't be voting, either. But not because he didn't want to.
Holding a Clinton flyer as Obama supporters chanted near the Reading Terminal Market, Quillen said he was registered to vote in West Oak Lane, but had no way of getting there.
Disappointed that the candidates hadn't spoken about issues relevant to the homeless, he said he still would have voted for Clinton - if only someone had given him a ride.
"Women care more about what's happening in the world than men," he said. "Let's see what women can do."
So heartened was the stirred electorate that people seemed to come out of nowhere wanting to vote - needing to, to hear folks tell it.
"They're motivated to do this," said Darryl Lee, standing in front of a polling place in a no-name barbershop in West Philadelphia's Carroll Park neighborhood.
Referencing the steady stream of voters, Lee said he was seeing a mix of long-forgotten faces and plenty of new ones.
Lee, a 55-year-old poll inspector, wore an "Obama '08" button on his plaid jacket. He said he identified with the man's message of change. And change would be good, he said.
These days, people are compelled to leave the neighborhood just to buy basic items. "It didn't used to be that way," he said.
Voting everywhere was spirited, even at the firehouse in heavily Republican Ridley Township.
"I think Hillary has a lot of girlfriends," said Marion Devlin, a minority judge and a Democrat, who noted that many GOP women had changed their registration to vote for Clinton.
"I told my wife it might be the only chance she has to vote for a woman for president," said Republican election judge Ray Bunting, 66.
As balloting progressed at the Folsom Fire Company, things got even more heated. A loud fire siren went off and a large column of black smoke rose above the nearby Siter Square neighborhood.
Volunteer firefighters, summoned by the alarm, flooded the firehouse as startled voters looked on. The firefighters then rolled their trucks to the blaze, which had destroyed a single-family home.
No one was hurt, but for a few moments, the immediacy of a true emergency disrupted the rhythms of a seminal day.
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