My early Republican bent was brief but vivid. It was the late 70s. (Cue up "My Sharona" followed by a Franklin Mint commercial.) There were two kinds of Democrats-- locals and Yankees. I shot down the idea of working as an intern for my cousin the local Dem House Rep (later Republican Senator) because my brief exposure to University of Alabama Fratboy culture had been enough.
So out of the woodwork my Mom's HS friend reappears in our lives. I'll call him Lizard Person. Mr. Person, as a college student, had been kicked out of 1950s U of Alabama for acting too racist. Read that twice. He is said to have finished up his degree at Baylor. and sometime later became a lawyer. Thinking back, he had the mannerisms of a closeted lawyer, but at the time he just seemed smarmy.
Mr. L. Person was a daring thing, an early Reagan supporter. He invited us all to a rally up in North Alabama. To my Black Belt eyes, used to folks maintaining a facade of stateliness, North Alabama was a lumpy land of poor white people with junk piled in their yards. We finally got to the rally, in a piney flatland filled with fever-eyed men in their court appearance suits, and I asked my Mom and Grandmom, "Are we at a Klan rally?"
Alas, it was not an exciting Klan rally, it was mumbled boredom. Later we visited L. Person's home, where I perused his shelves of books. I only remember one:
https://books.google.com/books/about/No_More_Black_Babies.html?id=tZa3MQAACAAJ
Later on, I told my Mom about that book, and she confronted Lizard on it, and he gave some slippery answer that seemed plausible by 1979 standards.
So anyway, Mom and Grandmom did phone-banking in the election, Reagan was more or less our family business, I had nothing against Carter but he failed to get the hostages, Boom, voted Ronnie, done. Turned out to be my last R vote for a while, but I did it.
As for L. Person, he visited us on Christmas Day, I was sleeping off a party from Christmas Eve, so to be cute he 1. Picked up MY guitar and started flailing on it to wake me up, and 2. went behind the French doors that formed a wall to my bedroom, and started tapping on them.
I sorta kinda kicked the glass out of them while he was tapping.
Lizard Person freaked the fuck out and fled the house.
I only saw him once ever again, more than a decade later. He showed up at my Mom's house wearing a Confederate lapel pin. I found out after his death that he had founded a "League" of the South or some shit. By happenstance I had heard of them when I was enrolled at Alabama and had gone on the student radio as "Student X" doing my best O Brother Where Art Thou "We ain't GOT no radio" voice, "defending" this League in absurd ways but actually I was mockin it Mr. Gambini.
Anyway, Mr. Person never said anything explicit. He used that good old cutesiness, that lingering pause, that raised eyebrow.
Me, later on I became Military Police and a Dirty Hippy at the same time.