Say it ain’t so, Harper Lee. How can the upright icon of To Kill a Mockingbird become the twisted racist of Go Set a Watchman? Your fans are gobsmacked.

But Southerners of a certain age get it.

Take two TAPsters who recall their grandfather, a prominent judge and Democratic Party power back in the day.

He was in many ways the Atticus Finch of both books. He never believed that black people (and that wasn’t the word then) were equal to white people. He wasn’t mean about it, but his views were nonetheless demeaning.

As a lawyer and a judge, however, he had a different view. He believed that every human being, black or white, was equal before the law. He believed that the courts had a sacred duty to treat every man and woman fairly and evenly. As a judge, he made some rulings that were surprisingly liberal for the time and not altogether popular with his peers.

His private views – and their apparent conflict with his actions – may baffle us now. But it’s hard to put ourselves in that place and time. You had to be there.