For several springs when I was a youngster, a couple of my neighborhood friends and I [View all]

would spend an afternoon in May scouting for mourning dove nests in the woods along a small creek at the edge of our small hometown. Doves construct a very rudimentary nest. It is basically just a handful of twigs and is nearly flat. Usually, just two white eggs were deposited in it.

We were careful not to touch or disturb the nest when we spotted one. Over the following three weeks or so, we'd check on them regularly until they hatched and it was just totally "neat" to watch "our" doves fledge and eventually leave the nest.

Then, one spring we noticed "Billy" following us as we checked on the nests. He was a year younger and known to have a hot temper. We avoided him as much as possible, but now he was trailing us, which seemed suspicious.

Sure enough, when we back-tracked and revisited the nests we'd just checked, all were now empty and the developing eggs smashed to the ground and stepped on. We chased him all the way to his house where his mother told us to "git" and to quit pestering her Billy.

A couple of years later, many were mortified when it was discovered that Billy had run an entire litter of beagle puppies through the wringer of his mom's Maytag.

A few years after that, I had to intervene to prevent him from continuing to slap his girlfriend around on a public parking lot.

I am not contending that Billy's family was representative, but they were the only Republicans in our neighborhood and, rightly or wrongly, reinforced my budding conviction that Republicans weren't "nice people". That conviction has never dissipated.