The invitation was irresistible.

"Please join Sheldon for a free macaroni and meatball community dinner to share your ideas about the issues affecting you and your family," it read, "and to receive an update on what he's working on in Washington."

Not Senator Whitehouse. Not Sheldon Whitehouse.

Plain old Sheldon.

Our old pal Shelly.

Coming to The Sal.

That's what I call the Salvatore Mancini Resource and Activity Center.

I had to go. First, to keep my finger on the town's political pulse. Second, to see what precaution Shel takes when he eats macaroni.

So did about 125 residents of North Providence, Johnston and Smithfield. A few Providence people might have snuck in, but no one was checking passports at the door.

Greeting people at the door was Shel himself, clad casually in slacks and a knit sport shirt. A lock of his carefully coiffed hair fell across his forehead, as if he'd just come from a hard day at work - an office job, no manual labor here - to sit and chat with some friends.

A pack of politicians was also in the house - most easy to spot because of the suits and ties they wore. In their defense, it's likely that's what they'd worn to work; I can't imagine any of them stopped home to change.

Charlie and Dick were there - North Providence's number one and number two.

The former top dog in North Providence, A. Ralph, was there. "No one campaigns like Ralph," Shel said in a nod to our secretary of state. I'm not sure what that meant - I'll have to ask sometime.

Vito was there, but he left early. He even let me take his parking spot.

One of our outgoing councilmen, John, was there.

Arthur was there. Shel called him Doc. "It's a nickname I picked up in high school," Doc told me later. The nickname oddly predicted the title he'd pick up for real in later life.

Joey, the president of the Town Council, showed up fashionably later and super-casually attired. "I guess Joe didn't get the memo about the suit and tie." Shel is quite the quipster.

I was given a name tag to slap on my shirt. None of the politicians wore one. I realized the lack of name tags gave them plausible deniability.

Let's say a taxpayer's got a nasty word for A. Ralph, and A. wants to duck the issue. All he has to do is shake his head and say, "You must have me mistaken for someone else. I'm Frank Carpano."

The dinner looked pretty good, and was served buffet style. As predicted, macaroni and meatballs. As far as I could tell, Shel didn't eat. Neither did the other politicians in the room.

"Did Shel eat?" I asked someone.

"Who?"

"Shel. You know, the tall white-haired fellow."

"You mean Dick?"

"No, the one dressed casually."

"You mean Senator Whitehouse?"

"That's the guy."

"I don't think he ate."

Darn. There was another reporter nearby from a paper in Providence. "Did you see Shel eat?" I asked.

"You mean Senator Whitehouse?"

"Yeah, Senator Whitehouse."

"No, I didn't."

Double darn. "I was hoping to see if he stuffed a napkin in his shirt, in case his gravy dripped."

"You mean his sauce dripped?"

"Look, in Providence, you can get away with that. But here in North Providence, we have our macaroni and meatballs in gravy. Red tomato gravy."

I'm pretty sure he jotted that down. Later, I heard him asking Dick what kind of macaroni was being consumed. "That's ziti," Dick told him. It's getting the details right that wins Pulitzers, ladies and gentlemen.

Shel opened the floor for questioning. Illegal immigration, the budget and energy crisis, the Bush administration. Shel fielded the questions deftly, sometimes answering directly, sometimes doing a little side-step.

What I noticed throughout was a breakdown in the analogy department.

"The Bush administration is like a plate of bad food on the table," said Shel. "It needs to be cleared out."

This is the best analogy he could come up with at a community dinner?

Shel supports off-shore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, especially if "our straw is drinking from" a giant field of oil off the coast of Cuba. Another peculiarly yucky food-like analogy, especially at a community dinner.

Shel had at least six aides with him. One ran the sound system, one took pictures and one ran the microphone around the room so questions could be heard.

I'm not sure what the others were doing there.

They sure weren't feeding the senator analogies.

And they weren't eating either.

It was like ...

Darn. Now I'm out of analogies too.

- Frank O' Donnell, a comic from North Providence, is the entertainment writer for the Breeze newspapers.