I should have known better.

Kirsh gets to his office -- he sold the building that once housed his clothing store years ago, but he still keeps a cluttered corner there -- usually before sunup.

Rep. Kirsh, the Clover Democrat from District 47, is tied with another, Olin Phillips of Gaffney, as the two longest-serving House members in South Carolina. Both were elected in 1978, and took office in January 1979.

He's got the "1" license plate.

"I got '1' and Phillips got '2' because K comes before P in the alphabet," Kirsh said.

At 77, Kirsh is the oldest House member in the state.

He is the son of a Jewish immigrant father and a Jewish mother from New York. His father ran a store in Clover starting in the 1930s, when the Kirshes were the only Jews in Clover. He is the husband of a lovely 76-year-old bride of 57 years named Sue that he stole from New York's Manhattan.

"It was Clover or nothing," he said of the marriage to the girl he met at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York at a tea party for his college fraternity.

Sue took Clover, has stayed almost six decades, and is going nowhere.

"He told me his father had a department store and I thought Macy's, and then I got here and found out how wrong I was," Sue Kirsh said. "I loved him and stayed, and this has been home ever since. A great life."

Herb Kirsh was always somebody in town, and still is.

"Treated everybody the same from the time I started here in the store, 'Yes sir, No sir,' " Kirsh said.

His office phone rings almost nonstop, with calls about rescue squads and schools and, of course, taxes.

By saying no to spending your tax money, Kirsh has earned the nickname "Representative No." He is happy to have the name.

"Taxes, I don't like 'em," he says.

But voters like Kirsh. He is a proud Democrat, but he often votes with Republicans. Efforts to woo him to the GOP in a community that votes Republican have failed.

"They have tried and tried," Kirsh said. "I started out in a time when there wasn't any Republicans. So there are some now. I vote the way I want anyway. I can't vote in lockstep with anybody or any party."

Kirsh is so tight with public money that he has no staff. He sits in the same Columbia office he got in 1979. Probably on the same chair.

He hasn't been opposed in the past four elections. He has sat for years on the powerful Ways and Means Committee, which decides spending plans for the state. He reads almost all if not all of those financial documents, often at his home dining table until the late hours of the night.

"He takes this job so very seriously," Sue Kirsh said.

Kirsh, a Duke University business grad, ran for Clover Town Council in 1970 because he didn't think people were reading the budget. He was then Clover mayor before running for statewide office.

What makes Kirsh is his accessibility and the public knowledge that he hates blowing public money. He is in the Clover office almost every day. He was there on Christmas, and New Year's Day.

The phone rang those days. Taxes. But he didn't answer e-mails. Because he gets none.

Kirsh said he is the only House member without an office computer.

He ordered it removed from his Columbia desk, and he doesn't have one at his Clover office or home, either.

"People know there are ways to get to me," Kirsh said. "They don't need an appointment. They can come and see me anytime. Or they can call. Or they can fax me something."

Kirsh has no plans to retire. A pacemaker installed three years ago is his only health problem, he said, and he has dropped about 120 pounds in the last couple of years.

Of course, he still weighs about 250 pounds.

Today, Kirsh will get up early for the opening day of the legislative session.

His wife Sue, who goes every day, will go, too. He will drive the big Lincoln with the "1" license tag.

Then, for a few months, Kirsh will work on spending your tax money.

Thankfully, he will tell his peers in the Legislature, almost always, no.