The Robesonian’s two-decade search for a local columnist who will represent the Democratic Party has ended. Meet Patsy Sheppard — editor.
It has often been said that each of us is a product of our upbringing. There is do doubt that is true for me, although it took the wisdom that comes from years for me to see the full truth of it. There is a comforting kind of acceptance that comes from realizing that much of what is real about yourself is not of your own doing.
I grew up a few miles from St. Pauls on a farm that has been in my family since the 1730s. We raised hogs and grew tobacco, cotton, soybeans, corn, and whatever else we could to keep the farm going. My parents were children of the Depression, and my father worried that could happen again at any time. He used to say that we were “land poor,” meaning that working the land and paying the taxes on it kept us poor. We were as well off as most people I think, although it didn’t always seem that way. Still, we had everything we needed and some of what we wanted.
Dad didn’t finish high school and he wasn’t much of a writer, but he was better with numbers than anybody I have ever known. He could do most calculations in his head faster than I could with a calculator. That probably explains why I was good in math and became a high school math teacher, even though I hated school as a kid.
My father was also interested in politics and he loved reading and talking about them. I grew up listening to adults discuss and debate politics. We watched CBS News and read the Fayetteville Observer every day, plus the Raleigh News & Observer on Sundays. Throughout my years in public schools and college my teachers encouraged political discussions and respectful debates to go along with a fact-based education. I was always aware of what was happening politically in our state and nation.
Politics were not mentioned at church, but issues like oppression, poverty, and personal choices were regularly discussed from a Biblical perspective. My Baptist upbringing was of the “judge not lest he be judged” and “worry about the plank in your own eye instead of the speck in your neighbor’s eye” variety. A longtime Sunday School teacher advised us that “if you wouldn’t say it with Jesus standing there then don’t say it.” Whenever I fail to follow her advice (as I regretfully too often do) I still hear Mrs. Grace’s voice deep in my conscience.
Today Dad would best be described as a Libertarian because he espoused limited government and personal freedoms. He was a registered Democrat like nearly everybody else in North Carolina, because in those days only Democrats could vote in primaries. Republicans and Republican candidates were that rare, especially in the South. In 1975 I turned 18 and registered to vote as a Democrat.
While I was still in college I met and married a man who was as staunchly Republican as I am devotedly Democratic. We have talked politics since 1975, yet we have never once had an argument about it. For 32 years we would go the polls together, cancel out each other’s vote, and go home and watch the results on television. He finally saw the light in 2008 and now we almost always vote alike, and we still don’t argue about politics.
That overly long background is my way of explaining how I came to be “from here but not from here,” as a recent acquaintance described me. Let’s be honest, there aren’t that many liberal Democrats in this neck of the woods, and those who do live here usually aren’t natives and/or they try to fly below the radar. Not me. I will gladly share my views on any political subject every chance I get, and I don’t mind a respectful debate either.
The editor has asked me to write an occasional column, so I am going to give it a try. It will be about political and social issues from my point of view, and will no doubt stir up some lively debate. I hope it will be of the thoughtful, fact-based type that will lead to a better understanding of both sides of the subject. But none of that “snowflake” and “fake news” stuff. I’ve got no time or patience for that kind of nonsense.
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