Tuesday, January 18, 2022

FLASHBACK: Family Politics (1986)

I drove Herr Cucaracha to Reedville, Virginia where my uncle and cousin owned property not far from the Chesapeake Bay.  It would have been hard to find Robbie's house from the highway if not for his homemade sign.  Then again, he also tuned in to Rush Limbaugh every day.

Dad had come up from Texas with Lois, my stepmother.  It must have been hard for her to visit relatives on my mother's side of the family even after Aunt Sissy, my mother's sister had died.

We headed to Washington, DC after staying overnight and headed straight to the Supreme Court.  Reagan recently had appointed William Rehnquist as the Chief Supreme.  

 


Lois, from Emporia, Kansas, was pretty conservative.  My father leaned libertarian.  I'm pretty sure I didn't tell either of them how Gore Vidal lampooned Rehnquist in Myron after the then associate justice signed an anti-pornography Supreme Court decision.

 

Nevertheless, we all wanted to see the deeply moving Viet Nam Veterans Memorial designed my Maya Lin.   If things had gone differently in our lives, the Hon name could have been inscribed upon it along with 58,000 others.  Dad had served in Saigon during the Tet Offensive and I had been eligible for the draft during my freshman year of college

 




















 

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