Conditions for Marriage

The following is a joke. It is only a joke. Please put your sectional, religious, and political preferences aside and take it that way, a bit of humor which has become part of family lore.

On the surface, you wouldn't think me Mom and me Pops could make a marriage work. Dad was a Catholic, a northerner, and a Democrat. Mom was Southern, Baptist, and from one of the few Republican enclaves in 1940s Dixie. Yet they were happily married for 56 years and had seven wonderful children. Particularly the second.

As me Pops himself told the story, when he proposed Mom (obviously) said yes, but with three conditions. "I will raise my children Catholic. I will even raise them Yankees. But I will not raise them Democrats," she told him.

Well, two out of three ain't bad, Pops must've figured, because he accepted her terms. And things worked out. Pops even became a Republican.