Let me tell you another reason why I don’t truck with the Democratic Party & just so you know, my grudges go back a long way so I’ve had time to nurse & cultivate them to high dudgeon. I worked my way through college, partly on the university work-study program. In about 1968, I had a work-study job at a Black housing project in Minneapolis. At the tail-end of the Civil Rights Movement & in the Black Power phase, housing was (& still is) segregated. My job was with a group of little kids but there was no place for me to take them, no toys, balls, or games, nothing to keep them engaged.
At the time, I lived with an elderly woman & provided security & housekeeping in exchange for room & board. Her house was in an exclusive area of Minneapolis near the University & the housing project was just a few blocks away. She had once been head of the Minnesota Democratic Party (DFL) & still had social affairs at her home with all the DFL politicians. She was the biggest snob I’ve ever met in my life with utter disdain for working people. But she had a great big unused yard & if I walked the kids a few blocks & cut through the bushes we could use her yard at least for story-telling since we had no other equipment.
They were great little kids, entirely well-mannered, but since they were poor were somewhat intimidated when we entered the exclusive enclave. It was just the only place nearby where I could take them & where we could all be comfortable. It never dawned on me that their presence would offend Mrs. Harding. But her snobbery rose to its full measure & in a state of horror & near-apoplexy she said the kids absolutely could not be in her yard. They weren’t noisy, weren’t tearing up the grass, weren’t throwing balls. They were just sitting with me listening to stories & chatting. But they were little Black kids & I knew that’s what bothered her. Nothing ruins a relationship with me faster than crapping on little kids so our arrangement didn’t last much longer & despite the no-rent situation I moved on. Fifty years later I’m still nursing that grudge. When I think of those little kids, I anticipate I’ll go to the grave with it.