Two Peas in a Pod

There are two things causing quite a stir around town lately. And while these two things are separate in function and in essence, they are definite bedfellows and where one is, you will most certainly find the other. I'm sure you've heard by now the 'insensitive' remarks made by Ann Coulter at a large conservative rally. I'm also pretty sure you heard the news that ol' Al Sharpton got the other day. And I'm even guessing that you may have heard the latest from the great state of Virginia. Oh, and let's not forget the buzz word 'reparations.'

In case you're still wondering, the two companions I speak of are "political correctness" and "offense."

Now, I happen to be a big fan of Lewis Grizzard. And for those few out there who have ever cared to read my posts in the past, you probably would remember this.

I was having a Grizzard moment tonight. I felt the desire to pull off my bookshelf one of my personal favourites, "Southern by the Grace of God." Lo and behold, to what did appear to my eyes! I had quite forgotten all about this piece he wrote called "I wish I was...Politically Correct in Dixie"; I figured I'd just might as well share it with you. So, y'all sit back and read this. Oh, and if you dont find this politically correct enough and you take offense, well, I just dont know what to tell you. But I do know that 'sorry' ain't it!

{I certainly agree with all those who have protested the playing of "Dixie" at Southern football games.

Although slavery isn't mentioned in the song, it still makes people think of the Old South, where every white person owned African-American slaves.

"Dixie" is definitely a politically incorrect piece of music. Even the word is offensive to some, and I apologize to those who are offended by my use of it.

But I'm proud to say my alma mater, the University of Georgia, years ago rid itself of any connection with the song or the word you-know-what (see, I didn't use the word that time, as I despise offending people).

The Georgia band used to play the song at football games. But not anymore. The only place they still play the song is at the University of Mississippi. They also wave Confederate flags and they allow prayer before a football game.

I'm not certain how long it will be before members of the Speech Police move in and shut down such rephrehensible behavior, but it could be any day now.

Georgia not only stopped playing the song, it even changed the name of the band, formerly known as the Dixie Redcoat Band. It became simply the Redcoat Band.

That prompted my stepbrother, Ludlow Porch, the famous radio talk show personality, to fire off a letter to the editor suggesting the following: "I applaud the dropping of 'Dixie' from the name of the University of Georgia band, but let us not stop there.

How can we allow the word 'red' which stands for communism? And the word 'redcoat' itself is an affront to the memory of all those Americans who fought against the redcoats of England in the Revolutionary War.

And 'band.' Poncho Villa had a 'band' of desperadoes and we had to send brave young soldiers into Mexico after him. So 'band' should go, too, and that just leaves 'The', which is a dumb name for a large group of musicians, so I guess they're just out of a name altogether.

I believe if we really try we can wipe away all symbols of the Old South forever. There's a company in Savannah that makes Dixie Crystal Sugar. Sorry, it's just Crystal Sugar from now on, and don't give me any grief about it.

And there's even a Dixie highway in the South. It should be referred to from now on only as Highway. As in, 'Well, you take Highway, then go down three blocks and...' There are even people named Dixie, believe it or not. They will have to get new first names, or go by their middle names. And if anybody named Dixie lives on Dixie Highway, the Speech Police will likely demand they be shot.

And if the song and word 'Dixie' are symbolic of the Old South, I guess we ought to stop using 'Old South' as well. Instead of saying 'Old South' perhaps we can refer to it as 'Back Then,' and we can roll our eyes when we use it so everybody will know we aren't talking about when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, but when slaveholders used to go around singing songs like 'Dixie' and 'Eating Goober Peas.'

But wait. 'Eating Goober Peas' is a song from Back Then, too, so don't anybody dare play that at a football game.

Songs about killing innocent people, incidentally, are just fine.}

No Offense, but I'm taking Offense

OK, it's time. I got into another Lewis Grizzard moment tonight. It's been a few months since I sat down and read any of his work. So, I took one of my favourites, "Southern By the Grace of God" off the bookshelf and leafed through.

Everybody it seems is offended by something or another these days. I'm sure I've even offended some friends lately. I dont mean to, but somehow, I do.

Well, in light of this, I came across this piece by Mr. Grizzard, "No offense, but I'm taking offense." So, I shall share it with y'all. Oh, and please, dont be offended!

{I'm offended.

I never thought I would say that because I'm an easy-going type of guy who figures it's a lot less stressful not to let anybody get to me.

But these are the 90's, and getting offended is "in", like drinking bottled water, refusing to eat red meat, and cursing smokers.

Hardly a day passes that somebody doesn't make the news by getting offended.

Sister Souljah, the rap person, rapped about killing while people, and then she became offended because Bill Clinton said she was a racist for doing such a thing.

Jessie Jackson, who was born offended, also got offended by Mr. Clinton's remarks, so it was a 2-on-1 fastbreak, two offendees on one offender. Hardly sounds fair, but that's baseball these days.

And that brings up Native Americans becoming offended by Atlanta Braves fans' tomahawk chop and criminals becoming offended by the name Texas Rangers, since Texas Rangers are law enforcement people who nab a lot of criminals and send them to jail.

So why should I be left off the bandwagon of offendees? It's a free country, isn't it? Here's why I'm offended.

There was an article on the front page of the Atlanta newspaper the other day concerning suburban Clayton County promoting itself as a nice place to live in order to persuade more Atlanta area people to move there.

The second paragraph began: "Feeling that the county has been treated for years as metro Atlanta's redneck stepchild..."

That offended me.

In the first place, I know the orgin of the term "redneck" and several members of my family fell into that catagory.

"Redneck" got its start when ruralites came to town on Saturdays to buy feed, seed, and maybe a new pair of brogans.

These people made their living working in the fields under the hot sun growing food, a very worthwhile endeavor, and their necks often became sunburned.

Townfolk, who tend to be snooty, thought these people ignorant, uncouth and undesirable because they tended to drive pickup trucks, listen to the Grand Ol' Opry on the radio Friday nights, and to be humble.

They were easy to pick on, in other words. My grandfather was one of those people. He made his living from behind a mule, and his neck got red. He also liked Ernest Tubb, and I never heard him make a loud, bodacious statement of any kind.

He also was the most gentle, caring person I've ever known, and I'm glad he didn't live long enough to see the term applied to him become such a derisive label.

In the second place let us discuss the term "stepchild."

In the context it was used - redneck stepchild - it seemed to indicate someone of that description was a most undesirable individual.

I spring from those who worked the soil and became red of neck, and I had a stepfather, so I was a stepchild, and that makes me twice offended.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to ride around in my red blazer - a sort of pickup truck - and pout.}

Tribute to 2 "late, greats"-Lewis Grizzard and Fred Arnold

Sometimes people come along and leave their mark on the world and when they die, the world has lost something. I remember when I was in high school, my grandpa became ill and would eventually pass away from this illness.

As a kid "Papa" and I would watch "Hee Haw" together and thanks to him, I got my love of country and bluegrass music. Being with him, I got to learn the music of Eddie Arnold, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams and the likes. He would take me on walks to my great-Grandma's house and we would walk through the rows of her garden and he would always point out what this was or that was.

I remember after he got sick, he couldn't really get out much anymore, so my mom would check out books from the library for him. I think she checked out every Lewis Grizzard book the library had at the time. And again, thanks to him, Lewis Grizzard became a favourite writer, commentator, comedian, and defender of the South.

Recently I came across a book in my library that I haven't read in about a year. Of course, I'm talkin' about a book by Lewis Grizzard. "Southern by the Grace of God."
I thought I'd leave a few of the more memorable excerpts here.

BORN RIGHT

"All of us native Southerners knew it was coming. And now, it is here. The Sunday paper carried a large article about Northern migration to the capital city of the South.

In the metro Atlanta area, the article said, native Georgians still have the edge, but it's not an overpowering one and the margin is dwindling. Said the article, "The migration patterns that brought Northeasterners to Atlanta's elite northern suburbs also sent people from the other regions to spots around the metro area. These settling patterns....have brought a new sense of place to dozens of Atlanta neighborhoods, influencing everything from the local politics to the inventory at the corner grocery store."

The article also quoted Yankee population expert, William Frey of the University of Michigan, as saying, "The nice Southern flavor of Atlanta may be diluted a bit with all the Northerners moving in."

The nice Southern flavor of Atlanta may be diluted a bit....

I certainly understand why somebody from the land of freeze and squeeze would want to seek asylum here. A friend, also a native Southerner, who shares my fear about losing our Southern flavor, put it way: "Nobody is going into an Atlanta bar tonight celebrating because they've just been transferred to New Jersey."

So what should I expect as my beloved Southland becomes more populated with migrating honkers? (Honker" Northerner with a grating accent who always talks at the top of his or her voice.) Will Southerners start dropping the last part of everybody's first name like the honkers do? Will I forever be Lew? Will Mary become Mare? Will Nancy become Nance? Will Bubba become Bub?

Will the automobile horn drown out the lilt of "Georgia on My Mind"? Will they dig a tunnel through Stone Mountain so native New Yorkers can remember the dark, choking atmosphere of the Lincoln and the Holland Tunnels? Will Harold's barbeque, 45 years in business, lose it's clientele to delicatessens where you have to scream at the top of your voice to get somebody to take your order for pastrami on pumpernickle?

Will the downtown Atlanta statue of the Phoenix, symbolic of the city's rising form the ashes, be replaced by a statue of Sherman holding a can of lighter fluid? Will grits become extinct? Will corn bread give way to the bagel? Will everybody, including native Southerners, start calling Atlanta's pro football team the "Fall-cuns" like the Yankee sportscasters, instead of the way it's supposed to be pronounced, "Fowl-cuns?"

Will "freeway" replace "expressway"? Will "soda" or "pop" replace "Co-coler"? Will Southern men start wearing black socks and sandals with Bermuda shorts? Will "Y'all come back" become "Git outta here"?

I was having lunch at an Atlanta golf club recently. A man sitting at another table heard me speaking and asked, "Where are you all from?" He was mocking me. He was mocking my Southern accent. He was sitting in Atlanta, Georgia, making fund of the way I speak.

He was from Toledo. He had been transferred to Atlanta. If I hadn't been 46 years old, skinny, and a basic coward with a bad heart, I'd have punched him. I did, however, give him a severe verbal dressing down.

I was in my doctor's office in Atlanta. One of the women who works there, a transplanted Northerner, asked how I pronounced the word "siren." I said I pronounced it "si-reen." I was half kidding, but that is the way I heard the word pronounced when I was a child.

The woman laughed and said, "You Southerners really crack me up. You have a language all your own."

Yeah, we do. If you don't like it, go back home and stick your head in a snow bank. We really don't care how you said it or how you did it back in Buffalo.

I read a piece on the op-ed page of the "Constitution" written by somebody who in the jargon of my past, "ain't from around here." He wrote white Southerners are always looking back and that we should look forward. He said that about me. He was reacting to a bumper sticker that shows the old Confederate soldier saying, "FERGIT, HELL!"

I don't go around sulking about the fact that the South lost the Civil War. But I am aware that once upon a long time ago, a group of Americans saw fit to rebel against what they thought was an overbearing federal government. Ther is no record anywhere that indicates anybody in my family living in 1861 owned slaves. As a matter of fact, I come from a long line of sharecroppers, horse thieves, and used car dealers. But a few of them fought anyway - not to keep their slaves, because they didn't have any. I guess they simply thought it was the right thing to do at the time.

Whatever their reasons, there was a citizenry that once say fit to fight and die and I come from all that, and I look at those people as brave and gallant, and a frightful force until their hearts and their lands were burnt away.

I will never turn my back on that heritage. I am proud to be a Southerner. If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times: I'm an American by birth, but I'm a Southerner by the grace of God."

Forefathers John Calvin, Robert E. Lee and my Heavenly Father

But although our mind cannot conceive of God, without rendering some worship to him, it will not, however, be sufficient simply to hold that he is the only being whom all ought to worship and adore, unless we are also persuaded that he is the fountain of all goodness, and that we must seek everything in him, and in none but him. My meaning is: we must be persuaded not only that as he once formed the world, so he sustains it by his boundless power, governs it by his wisdom, preserves it by his goodness, in particular, rules the human race with justice and judgement, bears with them in mercy, shields them by his protection; but also that not a particle of light, or wisdom, or justice, or power, or rectitude, or genuine truth, will anywhere be found, which does not flow from him, and of which he is not the cause; in this way we must learn to expect and ask all things from him, and thankfully ascribe to him whatever we receive. For this sense of the divine perfections is the proper master to teach us piety, out of which religion springs. By piety I mean that union of reverence and love to God which the knowledge of his benefits inspires. For, until men feel that they owe everything to God, that they are cherished by his paternal care, and that he is the author of all their blessings, so that nought is to be looked for away from him, they will never submit to him in voluntary obedience; nay, unless they place their entire happiness in him, they will never yield up their whole selves to him in truth and sincerity.

From "Institutes of the Christian Religion" by John Calvin

Are you a Southerner or a Yankee?

Take this here little test-it will do either one of two things: it will confirm what you already knew to begin with, or it will suprise you at the way our beautiful Southern dialect is being polluted by the harsh Yankee tongue.

This was posted on one of my favourite forums

The Dixie War Room

I Am The South

by Louise Nettles Allen

I was born on April 12, 1861, in the Harbor of Charleston, South Carolina and the Constitution of the Confederate States of America is my Birth Certificate.

The blood lines of the South run through my veins, for I offer freedom that each State should regulate her own affairs, according to its best interest. I am many things and many people.

I Am The South.

I am millions of living souls, and ghosts of thousands who died for me. I am the Farmer-made soldier who did not turn his back during Pickett's Charge. I am the Rebel Yell that was heard across many of my rolling fields, protecting our homeland.

I am Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson: I stood at Fort Sumter and fired the shot heard through our young nation. I am Longstreet, Hood and Patrick R. Cleburne. I am General's Johnson, Beaugard and President Jefferson Davis.

I remember how we fought in Gettysburg, Cold Harbor, Vicksburg, and Atlanta. When duty called I answered and stayed until it was over. I left my heroic dead in Chickamauga, in the fields of Shiloh, on the bloody hills of Mannassas and the mountains of Kennesaw.

I Am The South.

I am the Mississippi River, and the cotton fields of Alabama and the piney woods of the Carolinas. I am the coal fields of Virginia and Kentucky, the Florida coast and the Louisiana bayou. I am Richmond, the Capitol of the Confederacy. I am the forest, field, mountain, and rivers. I am the quiet villages and the cities that never sleep.

I am the Heritage that's been forgotten, the dying memory of a way of life that is being still. You see me in the twilight and hear me in Dixie, as the past continues to fade away each year.

Yes, I Am The South, and these are the things I represent.

I was conceived by force, and God willing, I'll spend the rest of my days remembering my birth. May I always possess the integrity and the courage, and the strength to keep my Heritage alive, to remain a Loyal Southerner and stand tall and proud to the rest of the world.

Do not forget who we are, what we are and where we came from.... This is my goal, my hope, my prayer.
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Oh, I found out yesterday my sister is having another girl...Yea!!! Aunt Dessie x 2!

Book Review

I have been reading a series of books written by a husband-wife team, Bodie and Brock Thoene. The series: "The A.D. Chronicles."

As I began the first book, "First Light", I wasn't looking for much other than a temporary trip into fiction-land and a reprieve from the daily grind. But as I got further into the book, I figured the daily grind could wait! LOL! I couldn't put it down!

The time: approx. 30 AD, the setting: Jerusalem and surrounding cities

The political climate is precarious. The Temple priests are divided over many issues. The local folk are crying out for Messiah to come and defeat the Romans. Danger lurks behind every shadow. Whispers of Herod Antipas' cruelty on the lips of only the bravest who dare say anything against him.

And if that were not enough, now we have a band of people following after One whose teachings are more like riddles. While the band of people grows, so are the questions that come from His inner circle. The rumors around the city have attracted the attention of the sick, the hungry, the helpless...and the ones in power.

I have, as well as many other Christians, have read the gospel accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John many times. I admit, I don't have a great, stretching imagination. So, when I picked up this series, I got a chance to read these gospel accounts with a whole lotta imagination woven into them.

I am very impressed with these books. They make the accounts we read about in the Bible stand out in a way I have never seen before. While I DO NOT hold them to the same esteem I hold the Bible, I do like the way the authors have taken Scripture and researched historic, factual evidences and interwoven them.

While there are true, factual characters, such as Jesus, His disciples, King Herod, and all other historical persons of the gospels in this book, there are also fictional ones as well. I won't give away anything that would compromise the story line in case someone wants to read them. But I will say that these books have caused me to both laugh and cry. And because of them I have fallen in love with Jesus all over again! I highly recommend them and pray that they make you stop and think of Jesus in a way you maybe never have before.