As was true of most red-blooded, intelligent and good looking men who lived in Oregon County in the thirties, Daddy was a Democrat. However, in my field of acquaintances there was one notable exception, Joe, my older sister's boyfriend. Joe was a Republican and every bit and bull-headed and stubborn about his governmental leanings as Daddy. As you might suppose, this made for some heated discussion around the supper table because Joe lived just across the field from us and he often appeared about meal time.
His excuse to Mama was that since he lived with his sister, who he vowed burned water, it was his obligation to find a good supply of nourishment and he had lucked out with his girlfriend's family.
You see, Joe liked to eat. Some people just like to eat, and Joe was one of them. He enjoyed the pure, physical sensation of filling his mouth up, chewing and swallowing. And though he was very tall, he never put on weight until he stopped hand-firing freight trains. Then he got pretty big.
In my middle years, I often ate with Joe, and one evening he quizzed me as to why I had stopped eating before my plate was empty. I said, "Joe, I'm not hungry." He bounced back with, "What's that got to do with anything!"
Shortly before he passed, he was recalling those early meals we shared and he reminisced of a big, yellow bowl (I believe it was probably a mixing bowl) which Mama often filled with potatoes, fried (it goes without saying!) in bacon grease. Unless there was chocolate pie for dessert, Joe said he always took hot bread and wiped up all the excess bacon grease in the bottom of the bowl as a fitting tribute to Mama's skill at the stove. It there was chocolate pie, he ate chocolate pie.
I remember once when he ate a whole chocolate pie, though he always denied that it happened.
One evening after consuming an inordinate amount of food, Joe started the nightly political forum by asking Daddy, "Why in the world do you insist on being so blind to the faults of the Democratic party? You're not a stupid man-can't your see Roosevelt is in the process of ruining our country? Why, man, why, are you a Democrat?"
"Well," Daddy drawled as he lit up a Camel (unfiltered) and let the smoke kinda curl around his lips and nose, (Daddy died a young man-heart disease got him-and I've always felt two pack of cigarettes a day didn't do him a lot of good,) "Well Joe, my daddy was a Democrat and my granddaddy was a Democrat, and my great-granddaddy was a Democrat, so I guess that's a good enough reason for me to be one too,"
"Ah-ha", Joe screamed in triumph. "What if your daddy had been a horse-thief and your granddaddy had been a horse-thief and your great-granddaddy had been a horse-thief, what would you have been then?"
"Well Joe," Daddy grinned, "In that case I guess I'd been a Republican."
That was the night Joe ate the whole chocolate pie.