Republican

The past is a grandmother from the deep south who was born before the invention of the airplane and knows how to make chicken dumplings from scratch.

Her name is Carol Ransom Smith. By the time I get to know her she's moved to California.

She adored Ronald Reagan when he was Governor, but didn't live quite long enough to see him elected President.

At least one of her brothers – she had six of them– worked in a coal mine near Moundsville, West Virginia. I think his name was Millard, or Homer.

I met Homer, but not Millard. By the time I met Homer he was a very old man living in a
wood-shingle house in Azusa California. He'd moved west at the turn-of-the-century and started a small grocery store there.

By the time I met Homer I was a young kid just starting to make my own memories.

He was sitting outside on the porch of his house, wood-shingled, painted white as I remember, rocking back-and-forth in his rocking chair, chewing tobacco.

Homer kept an empty can of Folger's Coffee on the floor a foot or so from where he sat. Every so often he'd spit a wad of chewed tobacco in a perfect arc into the red can--bing!

I've never seen anything like it, before or since. It was uncanny. I never saw him miss!