Saturday Night Excursion

Ride with me tonight, dear reader, as we run an errand in a typical medium-size Alabama town. It might be your town but perhaps not. Though we share a lot of similarities across the South, we are not all the same. We remain, even in this post-modern era, a people tied to the land beneath our feet. Roads, dwellings, stores, and houses of worship--creeping toward uniformity with the passage of time, and yet still distinctive. Piedmont, Black Belt, and Coastal Plain, mountain and valley, river towns and lighted mountainside metros; all retain a uniqueness recognizable in culture and syntax--if you care to notice.

This particular night is cold for Alabama, even by February standards. A clear sky filled with stars that look as cold as I imagine the infinite reaches of space. A waning gibbous moon provides enough light for the journey--no headlights necessary, but we will use them anyway, you and I, because we are good citizens, are we not?

We will stop at the grocery store to pick up a few essentials. The store is named for two merchant partners of days long past, but ignorant Yankees who relocate to our homeland will often make the incorrect assumption that the name refers to our desire for a different outcome to that conflict fought here some 150 years ago.

We could drive a little further, you and I, out to the highway that bypasses the old downtown in almost every small southern town. The Great Whore of Babylon, home of the smiley face and the falling prices resides there, and her wares have hypnotized our people. She has murdered Pop, trampling his broken-hearted body in the small town street, and poor Mom now resides in the nursing home--having driven them out of our presence and boarded up their shops on Main Street. Her patrons "save" on the labors of low-wage part-time workers--50 check-out lines and only two operating at any given time. We won't go there tonight, you and I. I loathe her for what she has done to my land, and I will not feed her, even with my meager gold.

Purchases made, we follow a circuitous route back home. Something big is happening at the high school auditorium, somewhat pretentiously named "The Performing Arts Center." Lots of buses and trailers, rows and rows of cars. I finally figure it out. It is a southern gospel music concert. A packed house of matrons with big hair and floor-length skirts, their husbands in polyester sans-a belt slacks and starched white shirts. I spot not one, but two "Thrasher Brothers" buses. Not school buses, mind you, but the $250 grand jobs that only the biggest rock and country stars use for touring. I marvel. Is there that much money in singing about Jesus? If so, is that how the Master would have it spent? It is a mystery too great for you and I to solve tonight.

We arrive back home, shivering as we unload our purchases. The dogs will come inside tonight with us where it is warm. Twenty degrees and 25 mile an hour winds are not easily tolerated by Southern man nor beast.

The dogs are lucky. Some people in our little town will not be as fortunate. But at least it's not you and I, and for that, we can be thankful.