My wife and I reached the parking lot of our polling place in St. Louis County, Mo., within minutes of the doors opening at 6 a.m. CT. It was still dark out, and the line of voters was already 150 or so feet back from the door. (We joked with the men immediately in front of us that, if you rewound that scene 25 years, we would have all been in a line for tickets to a Journey or Mötley Crüe concert.)

Fortunately, everything proceeded at a relatively reasonable pace. Inside, there were too many voters crammed in too little space, but no complaints. We were finished by 7:30 a.m.

As we walked back outside — into what was, by then, a clear, crisp, bright-sky morning — the long line had all but disappeared. A poll worker told my wife that they would enjoy about an hour of semi-calm before the next crowd hit around 8:30 a.m. — the “drop the kids off at school, then vote” wave.

Driving away to breakfast, my wife said she had counted at least five young, giddy teenage girls in line, presumably first-time voters. “I’ve never seen that many young people this early,” she added. “Hopefully, that means something.”

Hopefully it does, because Missouri has been almost flawless at picking Presidents during the last 100 years, except 1956, and it promises a razor-thin margin for the eventual victor this year. In the last three Missouri polls before the election — one each from FOX News/Rasmussen, Reuters/Zogby, and SurveyUSA — Obama and McCain were dead even at either 49-49 or 48-48. I don’t expect the nation to be as closely split as our bellwether state, but if it is, this could be a very long night indeed.