by Leon Alligood, Tennessean staff writer

LAFAYETTE, Tenn. — Robert Garrison, a retired instrument technician at the TVA steam plant in Gallatin, was not content with a life of cut-rate ''early bird'' buffets and garage hobbies.

''That's not for me,'' Garrison said.

Grumbling, he said, was more his forte.

''I've been doing a lot of that lately, so I decided to do something about it.''

The 65-year-old Gallatin man is running for Congress. On Nov. 5 he will be the Republican Party's nominee in the 6th Congressional District race.

Garrison's ''putting a few miles'' on his new Saturn Vue, traveling the 15 counties in the district. One recent stop was the Macon County Courthouse square in Lafayette, sitting in the shade of a 150-year-old oak tree on benches where men in overalls shave cedar sticks down to toothpicks.

Garrison sees a corollary between the bench whittlers and their piles of shavings and an America that, in his view, has misplaced its moral compass and has been weakened by compromise.

''I'm not a politician. I'm not polished, but I just got to the point that I had to take some action. Our USA is way out of whack. Our Constitution has been eroded. This is not the America I was born into, and I decided to take a stand,'' Garrison said.

He was born in Big Stone Gap, Va., but has lived most of his adult life in El Paso, Texas, and Gallatin.

''My people were mixed Cherokees. I'm half-Cherokee myself. My Indian name is Soaring Eagle. I look like a Soaring Eagle, don't I,'' he said, laughing as he patted his portly stomach.

The candidate wore a dark suit, white shirt and a thin gray tie. His hair is silver, thin on top and slightly bushy on the sides. Rheumatoid arthritis limits his walking.

''But the mind's just fine,'' he added.

What's on Garrison's mind these days is a wide range of issues, everything from closing the country's borders to new immigrants to protecting Second Amendment rights to bear arms to providing a prescription plan for senior citizens.

''We've got to take care of our own people first on all these issues. Illegal immigrants need to go, I don't care if it takes every Greyhound bus in America to send them back. With our borders wide open, we're asking for trouble,'' he said.

Gun control is unconstitutional, the candidate believes. ''It's part of our heritage that Congress should not be able to take away from us.''