The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down ( a new track)

Hi, I feel like ringing a bell and singing la la... You know how that song goes.
Well, it's a sad song and one written ease the blood up in a southerner until he or she gets julep-eyed and falls into that particular state of mind which exists in all white people born below The Line. "The Southern Thing" I admit to falling victim to The Southern Thing or "TST" many times. People down south make quite an issue about it; in fact there is even a tag line that goes; It's a Southern thing; "You wouldn't understand." that gets put on various things like coffee cups and T-shirts. They sell them right next to the logo of the rebel soldier with his flag and long beard who proclaims, "Forget? Hell!" This is convenient because that whole "Forget? Hell!" business is "A Southern thing,..." Get the picture?

OK? Fine. Now I am a Southerner, born a few blocks from where the very first shot of The War between The States was fired and around the corner from the doctor's house where they took the fellow to die. Shortly after this, my neighbors would have day tripped to Manassas to watch the US Army route the rebels and when that didn't happen, they soon found that living in that particular slice of The Commonwealth would separate them forever from the true antebellum south. Never the less, after living in NC and FL for many years, you may be certain "I understand." If fact I understand so much that when I figured out that Senators Clinton and Obama were to run for the Democratic nomination. I said, "God dammit , the party has a chance to sweep into office and they come up with a woman whom most people in the south can't stand and a colored guy." That's right; a "colored guy". And for the first time in my life, I thought I might just have to vote Republican and John McCain seemed like a presidential fellow. Well, that was a couple of years ago and I listened and realized that both Clinton and Obama were on the ball and I started liking Obama's message and the fact that he seemed cosmopolitan in a world that had to be getting tired of The US telling everyone how it was going to go. I became a supporter.

Last night, as I saw the results start to come in and the pundits with their complex math were saying Obama could win, all I saw was a whole line of the old south going for McCain, AL, MS, KY, AR, TN and Texas, and I felt the old racial thing stir in my gut. But wait! The Commonwealth of Virginia, a state who had not voted Democrat in 40 years went blue and then FL, the place where I live and have had to put up with all manner of racial crap, is blue too.
NC, still undecided but deadlocked with Obama showing the slight lead. Important, battleground, states coming through and driving old Dixie not necessarily "down" but in a different direction.

Now what. I am happy with the results, but at the same time a bit nervous due to a penchant this country has for letting good guys take a bullet. I would really like to have seen Texas and Alabama go blue because down there and here in FL as well, there live very rich reclusive old men who are the direct descendants of families who owned large numbers of slaves from Africa. These guys are quite serious on the subject of race and keeping the black person from breaking out. That the black person broke out a long time ago does not register in the within the bourbon colored paneled walls where old southern power seethes. I believe that these men killed the Kennedy's and Dr. King, and they did it simply because it embarrassed them and their political power base to have federal troops walking little children to school where grown men and women shouted the worst obscenities at a little girl with ribbons in her braids, and, it was on TV, in Black and White-like a war.
(well it's a southern thing, you wouldn't understand; Forget? Hell!) I bet you get it now.

So there. I want some peace and common sense to play over the land. I don't want to lose the possibility of a rebirth of the Good America in the cloudy conspiracy theory that would enfold us were President Obama to vanish by an assassins trick shot. We just can't allow that, for not only is Obama the person who might help our country rise to a level of a grand society, he is possibly the last president I will vote into office. When I came to be, this country was humming right along. There was a lot of hope. Unfortunately,
big issues of race and gender had to be hammered out and that took time. You were there, I'm sure. Then last night, one of the greatest obsticles between us and our ability to claim status as a truly great nation, just fell right over. No big thing as it turned out. It was just a matter of drawing a few lines with a felt tip pen and running it through a grade scanner like at school and enough people did that in hope that Mr. Obama can deliver the goods.

Hard times are ahead maybe the Republicans know this and that's why they did not field the very best horse (or moose) From where I sit, I can see the "GOP" doing just that. OK, but whatever they did, last night the people took the ball and seem ready to run, sing and ring those bells. Like I said, I'm on that wagon and I'm ready to make some noise.