The Right Side

I was raised in a middle class, uncompromising republican home in New England when political code words were only slightly more discreet than they are now.

We did not approve of welfare or the people on it.

We did not approve of integrating the schools and actively opposed busing.

Inter-racial dating was strictly forbidden.

We favored charity when it meant dropping a few coins in the Salvation Army bucket at Christmas or donating a turkey to the New England Home for Little Wanderers at Thanksgiving but the rest of the year the less fortunate were pretty much on their own. Exactly as they deserved, my mother would take pains to point out.

We were encouraged to clean our plates because children were starving in Europe – a safe distance away -and certainly not our responsibility.

We were force fed religion, although only the Baptist brand, and were taught early the perils of having Catholic or Jewish friends. No foreign cars were going to be parked in driveway and no un-waspish company was going to find welcome at our door. When the house next door went up for sale and was purchased by a family with swarthy (my grandmother's word, I had to look it up) skin and a complicated last name, a chain link fence quickly followed because Heaven help the neighborhood, those people are everywhere. They were harmless and gentle-natured Lebanese folks – not aliens, not terrorists, not even democrats – but we weren't allowed to speak to them.

Little by slow, I came to disagree with the house rules and by the time I was a teenager, I was headed for a full on change of heart. My daddy, using the tolerant and overly patient tone of voice he reserved for my mother when she was on her way to an alcoholic meltdown, would tease me and we both pretended there was no serious undertone to it. He liked to assure me that I'd come around once I'd spent some time in the real world. His world sure as hell wasn't mine, I would fire right back. My mother simply doubled down, informed me although we might live in a democracy, it damn well didn't extend to inside her living room and I could just shut the hell up. Political views became one more thing we loathed about each other.

It took some time before I realized that no amount of reason or dissent was going to change their minds or mine and as so many families do, we reached an impasse. Spirited debates between me and my daddy grew just the tiniest bit ugly and angry and my mother threatened to put me out on the street if I ever thought about criticizing Goldwater again. Coming from a woman who considered Joseph McCarthy the second coming and believed the entire moon landing  had happened on a Hollywood sound stage, I couldn't say I was surprised.

There'll be no peace and love bullshit in this house! she screeched at me over one Sunday dinner when she learned I had plans to attend an anti-war demonstration. It was so absurd that I very nearly choked on a a brussel sprout and my poor daddy – having a finer appreciation of irony than I'd suspected – laughed until he cried and did his best to turn it into a bronchitis attack. She gave him her patented traitor's glare and slammed her fist impotently on the table but all it accomplished was a nasty, set-in stain on the crocheted table cloth.

Nana never got over that gravy stain.