November 17, 2018:
I told her, "I'm a Republican 'cos no-one else is."
That was a bit oversimplified, but it did capture my lifelong contrarianism.
She chuckled quietly in her wise, grounded way. She said, more or less, she was too, for pretty much the same reason.
But that had a different meaning in her context. In the South at that time the Democratic Party was still the party of Jefferson Davis. It stood for Southern pride, for one day rising again, for the Klan, for keeping the niggers down. It was all about the redneck hillbilly bullshit which she thought, frankly and rightly, was totally beneath her.
She never was of this culture. She was always too bright, too well-educated. You can see it in her eyes beneath her big Sunday hat, in her newlywed photo of 1912. She's the brains of the bunch. He's a handsome fellow certainly. But she has the sparkle.