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Our dogs have better pedigrees than most of us. Scoop is a pure-bred Cairn Terrier, the favorite hunting dog of Scotland. Our other dog Gypsy is a Red bone Coonhound, the favorite hunting dog of the Carolinas. They are pure breds. My hunting and fishing days are behind me but I can smell a rat. I got that from my father who was a mongrel like me. He was a middle child of a South Georgia farmer and his wife blessed with 10 children. My father escaped the high expectations his parents had for the oldest, his sister Cora Lee. She was a nurse who died in the 1918 Influenza Pandemic. It is tragic to lose a child. You never ever quite get over it. He also escaped being pampered as the baby, his sister Sarah. Like most middle children, he had to fend for himself. That was good. It made him independent, resourceful and an adventurous mongrel. He had another advantage. He was the smallest of his brothers, the runt of the family. To compensate, he developed a fearlessness that brooked no nonsense. His sister Christine once told me, “You learned not to mess with Ed. He was a fighter.”

All of this made it clear to me how he achieved all that he did. His parents had lost their farm when they could not pay the mortgage. My grandfather and his family became traveling entrepreneurs. My father attended 12 different schools before he was graduated from high school. At age 15, he left home on foot with what little money his family could spare to walk and hitch wagon rides for 350 miles from Homerville, GA, to Greer, SC and the promise of a job. Walking, doing chores for meals and sleeping in barns, it must have taken him a month to reach Greer.

In South Carolina, in the early 1930s, he voted Democrat as did most others. It would be almost 40 years and a world war later that the Southern Strategy turned Southerners into Republicans. We always were conservatives but the two parties changed. As my mother once said, “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party. It left me.” Republicans became the party of red neck, blue-collar America. In 1992, 15 of the 20 most blue collar Congressional districts were represented by Democrats. Today, all 20 are held by Republicans. This helps explain Donald Trump’s success and the nation’s polarized politics. What was once an elitist Republican Party has become the party of mongrel America, the people who do the work, pay their taxes, fight our wars and believe in God. The Democrats have become the elitist party of academics, celebrities and erudite skeptics who have never held a real job and pay accountants and lawyers millions of dollars to reduce their tax liability. Gretchen Wilson’s lyrics sum it up best:

My flag’s still flyin’ there ain’t no denyin’ I’m American born and bred Still proud and united Bring hell and I fight it This blue collar done turned red.

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