I come from a broken home. But not in the traditional sense. Our family was split down party lines. My father was a liberal Democrat and my mother a conservative Republican. That was a fact; a trait that had been passed down from one generation to the next.
Growing up in a divided house was enlightening, exciting, and even contentious at times. Nothing is ever simple especially when it comes to religion or which side of the political fence you chose to hang your hat.
The dinner table was a platform for discussion…it was a political soapbox for the issues of the day to be “chewed over” along with a side order of liver and onions, orange jello with carrots, and a dollop of cottage cheese. I would have been happy with just the orange jello.
My mother would say “There is no sense voting this year, we’ll just cancel each other out,” as she looked at my father across the supper table. In return he would shoot her a steely glance, looking up just briefly from sawing off a chunk of liver without ever saying a word; knowing all the while that they’d both be voting anyway. I can’t remember a time when either of them ever missed an opportunity to drop a ballot in the box or the winner gloating the following day.
“I told you so,” my mother would say. She was generally victorious given the fact that Kansas was and still is a Red Republican State.
During the political season, my sister and I would become a part of the vetting process. Our parents would drag us to “meet and greet” the candidates as they traveled through the Kansas High Plains. I remember shaking hands with William Avery at the school house in Healy, Kansas one Saturday afternoon in 1964. He was running for Governor…I was 10 years old and running to find the refreshment table.
My paternal grandmother was a democrat, a staunch Roosevelt supporter from the New Deal Era and later a get-on-the-bandwagon and beat-the-drum for John F. Kennedy. She would hand-out candidate propaganda and point out the virtues of backing a liberal democrat. I still have a couple of Kennedy For President bumperstickers. At that time I wasn’t old enough to own or drive a car let alone vote in the1960 election.
She seemed truly heartbroken when President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. She would later give all the grandkids a copy of “The Torch Has Passed,” an Associated Press story of the death of a president. I still have that book, it’s a powerful reminder to us all how our world can change in a split-second of time.
Over the years she would continue handing out pamphlets extolling the virtues of Lyndon Johnson and later Hubert Humphrey. Televised Political Conventions were the only time we were allowed to eat from TV trays in her living room. In the summer of 1964 we sat watching the Republican National Convention as Berry Goldwater fought to claim his party’s nomination. She was not a fan of the Arizona Senator. He would lose in a landslide come November to the Democrat incumbent Lyndon Johnson which didn’t seem to make her much happier. Although she did champion his views when it came to passage Civil Rights Act.
My grandmother was a teacher and later held public office for years. She was the Lane County Kansas Superintendent…an elected position in those day. She had a corner office in the county courthouse in Dighton. In the summer I would stay with her for a week or two and we would faithfully arrive at her office early every morning. She would go about the work of sifting through the latest textbook offerings, sending out correspondence, talking on the phone, and receiving visitors. All the while I busied myself reading books, walking the halls of the building and listening to the voices as they echoed from one floor to the next. Sometimes I would head for the basement and play in the empty jail cells. Sheriff Paul Marsteller didn’t mind, infact he seemed to enjoy the company, even if I was only 10.
Yes, my grandmother was a dyed in the wool Democrat, but she was also a realist. She would be the first to say, that if you want to get elected to public office in the State of Kansas you would need to run as a Republican. And she did. Mom, as the grandkids called her was a Democrat working to push her liberal agenda…all the while hiding in a Republican’s wolf clothing.
She taught me a good many things about politics as did my parents; the importance of involvement in local government and a duty to exercise my right to vote. If you don’t vote your mind she would say, you have no right to complain when things don’t go the way you think they should.
I followed in my father’s footsteps becoming a liberal Democrat. My sister on the other hand is a conservative Republican. Neither one of us live in Kansas now, but when it comes to the presidential election this November I’m sure our history will remain unchanged and we will indeed cancel each other out.
