Conversation in a small town

Mom and I were up in her hometown a couple of days ago talking to a guy we'll call Jimmy, who's a local contractor, about maybe selling him some land of ours that abuts his.  Good guy.

He told us a long story about how his nonagenarian father had starved himself to death, somewhere in the middle of his mother's 7-year descent into Alzheimer's.  She passed away somewhere north of 100.  Starving yourself to death sounds bad, but when he went back and told the story it became clear that it was in fact the tale of a guy who had been around for a long time, saw that there was nothing stretching forth on the road before him, and decided to determine his own fate.  At some point in time the staff of the rest home where the dad and his wife resided informed Jimmy that they were going to put in an IV drip because his dad was getting dehydrated, and he informed them that if they did that he would go up there and give them a proper asswhuppin, because his dad had made his call, and they needed to respect it.

Somewhere later in the conversation, we started talking about Jimmy's brother who lived in one of the more urban parts of the state.  He told us that his brother had, after raising several kids with his wife, gotten a divorce, come out, and had a succession of live-in boyfriends.  And he sounded at peace with this.

And this from a small-town guy who, a few years back, had clearly signaled his distaste for the Obama administration.  So, it seems, that even as a court decision has begun to drive a nail into the heart of NC's noxious Amendment One to allow gay couples to marry, the more important war is being slowly one on the most important battlefield, the hearts and minds of people.  Because, as we know all too well, the South in particular has ways of subverting the Rule of Law when it doesn't like it.