Old White Folk Story

[roguevalley]

42. my dad was born in 1927 and was the best man I ever knew. He used to get up

on buses in Portland to allow black women to sit and got his ass kicked more than once because he did it. He helped people get out of the Banport flood risking his life, black, white, hispanic because they were people in trouble. He taught us to always take people as they actually were, people.

My mother slapped a friend's face when he said the N word in front of my mother, father and his brother. She slapped the shit out of his face. She also fought fights in school when someone had the TEMERITY to slander FDR.

My aunt voted democratic even when marrying into a republican family for 70 years without telling them. She was an FDR girl in an FDR family, radical dems back in the day. She never said a word but voted dem all her life. She told us just before she died and became even more so my hero... my sweet Aunt Virginia.

My father said, "Always love people. Always."

His father was a socialist in Canada who owned the Square Deal Dairy in Alberta. He came to Oregon and helped organize unions in the railroads when it was worth your life to do that. He was blackballed and had to walk counties away to find labor to do to feed five kids.

They were my heroes. All of them. My grandfather was born in 1894. My other grandfather was born in 1885 and was a dem all his life. He taught his kids to be good and treat people right. His best friend in Lakeview, LAKEVIEW was a black man. They were always sitting together talking and passing the day on main street.

My great grandpa was born in 1834 in Kentucky, went to Missouri, fought in the Civil War until he was taken prisoner by the north, escaped and hid away until the war was over. He hated things so much he packed up the family, moved to Oregon on the Oregon trail and never looked back. My mother thought that her family were Yankees because Grandpa Robert never spoke of his service in the Confederacy. He taught his family to treat people right. You can't judge a book by its cover. He was lionized in his obituary as a good man, as Chairman of the local Democratic Party committee and as someone who with a shake of his hand was completely good to go.

That is my history that I try to live up to every day. My mother and father were die hard dems. They were liberals and didn't care what anyone thought of the word. I live everyday trying to make them proud. I am a die hard, leftie Liberal democrat. I don't care what the hell the shortcuts are that the third way and other quizlings use. I would rather push a position and fail than sell out and get nothing anyway.

I will always have my say and speak what I believe to be honest and true. No one has to agree with me but I will be damned if I will let anyone define who I am because I am older. I come from a long line of democrats and liberals who blazed the trail. Anyone who assumes that older and old people are idiots is a jackass. stereotype us at your peril.