A YELLOW DOG’S REVENGE [Sat, 2-6-21]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

A YELLOW DOG’S REVENGE   [Sat, 2-6-21]

My school classmates and I are at the dying age. In the columns on this blog for Jan. 11-19, I wrote of the death of Paula, and how much I liked her when we were in school, and how disappointed I was in her at the end of life. Now the death notice is for Jack Dye.

Jack dealt with Parkinson’s disease for 22 years. The last time we “talked” was via email. He dictated it for his daughter to send to me. He said simply, “I’m okay.”

Jack and I were good friends in high school, but not close friends. Close friends you run around with, go to each other’s houses for pickup basketball, drive around together at night looking for girls. Jack lived in town. As a farm kid whose family didn’t have a car, I didn’t hang out with town kids. I ran around with the guys with whom I’d ridden the school bus since 5^th grade. Also, with his looks and sweet, shy smile, Jack didn’t have to go looking for girls; they came looking for him.

It was at the every-five-years reunions of our class that Jack and I got deeper into friendship.

It must have been the 40 year reunion, maybe the 45. I asked Jack what he was doing. He said, “I’m the president of a big insurance company in Indianapolis.” That surprised me. Five years before he had been the truant officer in a fairly large county seat town.

Jack saw my confusion and told me, “I got weary with truancy, and when the banker offered me the job as the insurance agent in the bank, I took it. But that was sort of routine, and we’re old enough to retire. [Hard to hide your age from your high school classmates.] I just wanted to play golf. But the bank was bought by a big conglomerate. They came to me and said, ‘We’ve just acquired an insurance company, but we don’t know anything about insurance. But you do, so how’s about you running it for us?’ I said, ‘But I was going to retire and play golf.’ ‘They said, Well, if you’ll be president of the company, we’ll get you a membership in the best golf course in the city and pay you a salary of half a million per year.’ I figured, ‘Well, as long as I can golf…’”

I thought it was a great story, but it wasn’t over. “The best thing, though,” he said, with that sweet, shy smile that always attracted the girls, “is that I’m a yellow dog Democrat, and all these Republicans in brown suits have to report to me.” [1]

Wait, the story gets better. Five years later, I asked him how it was going at the insurance company. He said, “Oh, those guys were crooks. They were robbing the company blind. They thought I was a country hick they could keep on the golf course and I wouldn’t see what they were doing. I turned them in. They’re all in jail.”

The death notice his wife and children sent out said “He was always concerned about economic justice.” There are guys in jail who can attest to that.

RIP, Jack. You never disappointed me.

John Robert McFarland

1] A “yellow dog” Democrat is one who would vote for a yellow dog before voting for a Republican. In checking the definition on line, I came across a Quora post that says the Republican equivalent of Yellow Dog Democrat is just Republican. I am personally opposed to Yellow Dog voting of any sort.

            I know from our reunion talks that Jack wasn’t really a Yellow Dog Dem. The Yellow Dog statement developed when pro-slavery, anti-black Southerners claimed they would not vote for any Republican because Republicans were the anti-slavery party of Lincoln. Jack was a New Deal/Roosevelt Democrat, in favor of “socialist” economic justice programs like Social Security, Medicaid, FDIC, etc.