Zaleski: Aunts were not ‘cat ladies’

My uncles Alexander and Chester were members of “The Greatest Generation.” Al fought in Europe in World War II, including in a unit that liberated Nazi concentration camps in eastern Poland. Chester was wounded in the first months of the Korean War.

He served out his enlistment as a printer with Stars and Stripes army newspaper. When they came home they married extraordinary women. Aunty Ann was a stunning beauty of Italian heritage.

She was a buyer for a high-end retail store in my hometown, and a full partner in Uncle Al’s package store. She and Al had a long and happy marriage. Aunt Patricia was tall and beautiful, a valued office manager at a local factory, and the best cook in the family, Uncle Chester always said.

They were together 35 years at their home in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts, until her death. Neither couple had kids. The reasons were their own; nobody’s business but theirs.

Ann and Pat were not “unhappy cat ladies,” as defined by angry and unhappy Sen. J.D.

Vance, R-Ohio, who is Donald Trump’s vice presidential running mate. Al and Ann owned a friendly hound named Slicker. Chet and Pat had their laid-back sheepdog Ulysses with them all the time.

Happy dog people, not unhappy cat ladies. To hear Vance tell it (“weird,” as Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said), married couples without children are second-class citizens.

Vance would weaponize the federal tax code to punish childless couples. It smacks of a poll tax or a literacy test for vo.