The other evening, we had dinner with summer friends from Charlottesville, Virginia. The ladies chose a crisp white wine, I had a G&T, the host had something in a can and their grandson sucked on a root beer. The hostess served a delightful fish dish with fresh green beans and a little cornbread-corn pudding mix.

We watched the sun creep down over the Sheepscot, while a collection of model airplanes danced from the ceiling in time with a gentle breeze.

As we settled into a conversation I asked the hostess for her thoughts on the recent events in her adopted home town. She paused for a moment.

“I am glad I was up here and not at home,” she said.

In Charlottesville, the couple lives within walking distance of the university campus. The weekend clashes between neo-Nazi, KKK, and white supremacist groups took place just a few blocks from their front door.

She is a retired university administrator, he, a gifted writing teacher. The hostess is a California ranch girl, an archeologist by trade. He taught writing all over the world and is a former U.S. Navy officer, a blue water sailor. In short, they don’t fit the cliche version of an academic couple who spend their days in ivory towers watching the world go by. They are doers.

But when she talked about the events in her hometown, she paused for a moment and thought before remarking: “I might have gone down there.”

As she said it, she glanced at her grandson, just returned from a summer camp and eager to head for the adventure we call high school.

Later, I wondered if that pause was a sign of worry, maybe of a little bit of fear for his future. Who could blame her after a hate-filled spectacle erupted not far from her home?

I, too, am a bit nervous, after watching TV images of so-called armed patriotic militiamen marching down the street dressed in combat gear, complete with black rifles and shotguns slung around their necks as they escorted torch-bearing toughs, chanting anti-Semitic and Nazi slogans.

It could have been a scene from the Nazi documentary “Triumph of the Will.”

Despite claims to the contrary, these marching thugs are not historic preservationists trying to save treasured monuments. They looked like they were looking for trouble and they found it.

Not far away from our friend’s home is Congregation Beth Israel, one of the oldest synagogues in the South. Last weekend, a trio of armed men in combat gear stood across the street as worshipers prayed during Shabbat services.

News reports quoted the congregation’s president, Daniel Zimmerman, saying the armed men made him more than a little nervous.

“Had they tried to enter, I don’t know what I could have done to stop them, but I couldn’t take my eyes off them, either,” he said.

Several times the Nazi parade marched past the house of worship as they chanted “Sieg Heil,” and carried flags — red flags bearing Hitler’s swastika.

He told NBC News if he had filmed the marching men in black and white it would have looked like a newsreel from Germany in the 1930s. “I never thought, in my life, I would see this on the streets of America.”

You know the rest of the Charlottesville story. It was a riot. Pushing and shoving led to fists and sticks, and the battle was on. One of the marchers got in his Dodge sedan and drove into a crowd of folks opposing his point of view.  Then he backed up and ran over a few others, taking the life of a young woman and injuring dozens of others.

A talk radio guy said the Nazis and Klansmen and skinheads who marched in Charlottesville were OK because they had a permit from the city. The folks on the other side, the folks who defended themselves from the thugs, were at fault because they did not have a permit. Huh?

Meanwhile, the politics of hate visited Boothbay last week, when someone tossed KKK flyers on the lawns of our neighbors.

In the news business, we always say every story has at least two sides. One explained it this way: “No matter how thin the pancake, it always has two sides.”

In this case, we had hundreds of thugs, carrying “tiki torches,” march past an American synagogue chanting Nazi slogans, as armed “militiamen” stood guard. Back home, our neighbors found the KKK’s hate-filled tracts at their doorsteps.

Yes, there are always two sides to every story. In this case, they are called right and wrong, good and evil.

The other evening, we had a lovely dinner with our Charlottesville friends. And, for dessert, we were served a chilled dose of reality.