Either the inner loop or the outer loop of the Beltway is always snarled. One flows smoothly, the other is gridlock. This is a recent law that was passed by both inept parties. There has to be gridlock somewhere, if not everywhere. Inside the Beltway, the streets are basically parking lots. Underground on the Metro, however, things move pretty well. The lesson: Everything in D.C. happens under the surface.

No mosquito can possibly survive the carbon monoxide within 20 miles of the city. Everyone is sucking everyone else’s tailpipe. This is not a metaphor.

Pierre Charles L’Enfant, a French-born American architect, designed Washington. It was rumored that the traffic circles were constructed to confuse the British. This has led me to believe that I must be British.

Interestingly, L’Enfant was not paid by the U.S. government for his services and died in poverty, leaving a few watches, compasses, instruments and maps, all totaling about $46 dollars. It is hardly ironic that the U.S. government screwed the very guy who planned its own capital city.

L’Enfant got the eternal last laugh, however, with those damned traffic circles. He was French, indeed.

I know all about Pearl Harbor in World War II, but the Japanese didn’t really need to attack us in the 1940’s, they had already started a takeover of the U.S. through kudzu, introduced at the 100th birthday of America in Philly in 1876. We did the rest to ourselves by transplanting the ornamental rambler to stop erosion. By the early 1970’s, the U.S. Government declared kudzu a weed. Farmers curse it as a menace. It grows faster here than in Japan.

Kudzu, like a veggie tumor, grows malignantly, will climb trees, utility poles and into your house overnight if you leave the windows open. This stuff is all over the Deep South and working its way out to the rest of the country. I can see New York City as a lumpy, green mass like tall boxes under a leafy blanket.

Some people think it is an alien species. Some call it a conspiracy. The rest of us just watch it move faster than the Auburn offense can get down the field (note this year’s Alabama / Auburn football game). I say that because I heard a disgruntled War Eagle fan complain, “Just throw the ball in some kudzu, it’ll get to the end zone faster.” 

Experts have tried to kill it but kudzu likes many herbicides and grows even faster when sprayed by certain retardants. If you use napalm or agent orange, it may take ten years to control it.

Napalm? Agent Orange? I’m having a flashback, excuse me for a moment. 

(Doors music playing in background)

Okay, sorry. I’m back.

Tuskegee University has found that grazing goats works best and also produce gallons of mike while chewing the stuff. Kudzu munching goats leading a green revolution may be a few years away, but why not get them started? Perhaps the goat cheese industry doesn’t want to see the market flooded.

If we can’t beat it, however, we may as well join it. People have begun using the vines for basket weaving and the flowers for jelly. Since it is packed with nutrients, cooks have begun trying to recipe kudzu out of existence. Harvard has found that an extract from Kudzu can help treat alcoholism, likely brought on across the South by the frustration of the weed’s uber success. Bourbon with a kudzu chaser?

There are books and festivals and websites and blogs about kudzu. Universities have classes on it. Kudzu is being considered as a good source for biofuels because of the carbohydrate content in the part of the plant in the ground (it takes carbs to get ethanol). In fact, kudzu has the same, if not more carbs than corn, which would eliminate the controversy of using food for fuel. Kudzu is like solar and wind. It’s there. It’s not doing anything but growing. It can churn out 270 gallons per acre of ethanol. So what are we waiting for? Instead of “drill, baby, drill” perhaps we should be yelling “vine, baby, vine!”

Kudzu could make up about 10% of our nation’s biofuel supply. Or it can be used as a cheap food source. Or we can turn the fibrous plant into textiles. Sounds like the pesky wee just may lead the way to the future of alternative low-impact energy, low-impact fabrics and low impact food.

At a time when the green movement needs a push, maybe kudzu is just the vine to do the job. Wait a week and it will have solved seven more feet of problems.

Is the new game plan in political circles to make cartoon characters out of everyone? Earl The Unemployed Beekeeper, Linda The Office Rumor-Monger, Camille The Crazy Cheerleading Mom, Dave The Jackass Of The Cube Farm? 

Toward the end, the election took on a sitcom tone with campy characters filling in for actual substance. Tonight, Jo Ann The ER Nurse gets even with Frank The Crack Dealer.  

Did Tony The Tiger endorse someone? In the next election, will The Jolly Green Giant take on the incumbent? Will Ronald McDonald be a liberal or conservative? Hey, is that shifty Toucan Sam paling around with the Chick-fil-A cows? How does the challenger’s platform fit with Bugs Bunny or Larry The Cable Guy? What does Cindy The Less Than Perfect Dove Soap Model say when The Brawny Guy comes out in favor of Ralph The Nader?

In my neighborhood, we have June The Accountant and Jimmy The Golf Club Pro. They’re pretty dull. They hate each other (maybe because they used to be married until Phil The Lawyer came into the picture). Steve The Yard Boy and Shelly The Horndog get along like Julio The Tailgater and his posse: Gary The Redskin Wannabe, Russell The Stat Junkie and Henry The Ogler. 

Mike The Karate Teacher and Bertrand the Barbeque Briquet Fondler are possibly in the Witness Protection Program because Bertrand looks exactly like Vinny The Pipewhacker Testeroni from that CourtTV gangster documentary and Mike is the spitting image of Louis The Chinny-Chin-Chin Ferragamo. Howard The Guy Who Doesn’t Use Deodorant will never be on TV unless something tragic happens, like if maybe he and Skeeter The Pissed Siding Installer breaks into Sal The Gun Nut’s garage and both end up on Vince The Mortician’s slab.

This could catch on, this squeezing of humans into easy-to-grasp roles. Everyone has a part in this big American tale of simplistic labels. Let’s get Brenda The Angry Middle Manager and Sam The Embezzler out there for a speech. Lonny The Drunk has a few slurred words and Carl The Creepy Preacher will pretend to pray. Wendy the Promiscuous Mom and Ken The Slimy Paint Salesman will sneak behind the curtain for some vetting. Is this the future?

I just don’t want to be Terry The Brander? I don’t like that. Sounds like I work on a ranch. 

“So what do you think about the presidential race?” I asked.

Someone had to say something. He left it to me.

“Seems we are at a defining moment with a female candidate, an African American candidate and a Republican that half of the Republicans hate.”

“I’m tired of my own politics, so I couldn’t give a damn less about yours,” he said and made it sound less angry than the words imply.

“I didn’t actually mention mine,” I said.

“Don’t.” he said.

“Who was president when you were born?” I asked.

“Still sounds like politics to me,” he said, turning his head into the dappled sun to catch some warmth. “It’s all about greed. Greed or money, power, whatever.”

“No, just trying to get a bearing on –“

“How old I am?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Coolidge. Calvin Coolidge,” he said. “Lawyer from Vermont. Wanted to reduce government. Reagan liked the man. I was too young to know the difference. I remember FDR more. My daddy liked him. My mother didn’t. Truman was my man.”

He stopped as if he was about to say something and then said it.

“Did Reagan reduce the size of government?”

I knew it was a question he already had an answer for so I smiled and watched clouds form the shape of a horse above the trees across the water. We didn’t talk for several minutes. He squinted at the cloud as well.

“Let’s suppose you live another 30 years,” he said, turning ponderously to look me in the face for the first time in our talk. “You will be about my age then.”

He paused. I waited for him to finish. There seemed to be more answers in his silence than his words.

“What do you think the world will be like then?” he said.

“I can’t imagine,” I said and looked down at his scuffed shoes, likely bought back in the 1950’s and re-soled several times from the appearance.

“Will we have cured cancer?” he asked. “Or heart disease? Will we be in a war against somebody else we hate? Will we be able to afford college, medicine, a home?”

“I hope so,” I said. “I mean, I hope we will have progressed from now.”

“Hope is a funny thing,” he said. “It’s just a wish.”

He turned back to the cloud, which had shifted to be more of a mutant horse with two heads. Children laughed in the distance and a large brown dog barked in robotic cadence to their laughter. A mother yelled for them to be careful. The old man cut his eyes toward the children and the hard creases in his face seemed to soften.

“How about them?” he asked. “What kind of place will we leave them?”

“It really doesn’t look too good,” I said as the kids threw a tennis ball and the dog chased it across the yellow grass of March.

“It looks just like it did when Coolidge was president,” he said and bored his green eyes into mine with a look of total conviction. “People just don’t change very fast.”

More silence.

“We can have black and brown and red dogs and hate black, brown, and red people,” he said. “Don’t make any sense to me. There’s always a reason to hate. Complain about the cost of schools and applaud the building of more prisons.”

“One in every hundred Americans is in jail,” I said, remembering a recent headline. “One in every fifteen African Americans is in jail.”

“Should be one in every fifteen politicians,” he chuckled. “We have too many laws. What will government do when we’re all in jail for some reason or another? Who will pay the taxes and buy the goods? Who will work when everyone is in jail?”

He looked saddened by this thought. And it was followed by more silence.

“How about the environment?” I finally asked.

“Just like politics,” he said. “If we could get greedy people out of it, we just might have a chance. Unless we’re all in jail.”

I nodded. He grabbed the bench firmly and stood, taking a deep breath.

“When was the last time you went fishing?” he asked.

“I was about fourteen,” I said.

“I’m going right now,” he said, and held out his hand to shake mine.

“You can’t fish here,” I said. “There are signs.”

“See you in jail,” he said.

“Hey, Bob, I think I ruptured a kidney on the way to work this morning.”

We have a car tax that is tantamount to buying a new car every year and paying the sales tax on it, over and over and over.

“No Car Tax.” Did I read that slogan on a lot of signs in yards during an election once? That politician is gone but the tax remains.

We have speeding laws that could cost you thousands upon thousands of dollars over several years.

Now we have legislation before the House of Delegates that would make it a crime to attach rubber bull testicles to your bumper hitch.

“Mommy, What are those things on that truck?”

“Ah, umm, oh, that, err, those are ummm, part of the ahhh, oh look! Over there! It’s a house on fire!”

It’s not surprising that politicians are afraid of anything with balls, but considering the ridiculously serious things we need to address in government, it seems a bit frivolous. Then again, constituencies ask their representatives for such things and it is the job of the elected officials to represent their home area.

Sign in yard: “No more balls.”

There’s also legislation before the House to make it a felony to steal a cat. It’s been a felony to steal a dog for years. Now all those cats hanging around the capitol lobbying for equal treatment under the law may get what they want – unless that powerful dog lobby steps in and rips the rubber nads out of the bill. While this is being debated, someone is out there changing

a tire after driving through a pothole big enough to bury several cats and dogs.

“I saw those men catnap ol’ Felix right over there on the corner. Last thing I heard him say was ‘Meeeeoooowwww!’ Wait, have you seen my dog?”

If some get their way, it will soon be legal to drive your golf cart across the highway – but not with your pet in your lap. Pet lap-driving is on the legislative docket as well.

“I have been waiting years to drive my golf cart across the highway. But I want to do it with my iguana, Phil, in my lap.”

Sorry.

Don’t laugh if you live outside of Virginia. Check your own state lawmaking agenda and you’ll find all kinds of odd activity that seems out of place in a world with deep issues that can’t get solved with both hands and a map. Offbeat laws are always being proposed, but are seldom enacted. Ah, well, except that one back in the 80’s here that made milk the Official Virginia State Beverage (it was challenged by another delegate who wanted to give bourbon that honor). Milk won and it’s on the books.

“It’s moments like this that make me feel like my tax dollars are being used for a good cause.”

A resolution is currently before the House that would recognize the town of Independence in Grayson County as the “Official Home Of The Grand Privy Race” – as in toilets, johns, out houses with wheels. Yeah.

“Come and listen to my story ‘bout a man named Gitter. Went down Main, ridin’ on a – awe no, this is a family blog. Nevermind.”

The locals race the privies down Main Street in October during the Mountain Foliage Festival. They have a Potty Princess Pageant as well. There’s a resume builder for some lucky winner.

Back to the bull testicles on bumper hitches law, just because the reason for the law is interesting. The delegate proposing the legislation said he would not know how to respond to his five-year-old granddaughter if she asked him what was hanging on those hitches. I guess he never takes her to the animal barns at the State Fair because he’d be answering that question every time she passed a bull.

“Sweetheart, that big boy right over there won first prize for –“

“Grandpaw, what in the world are those things – ?”

“How about those clowns over yonder?”

While a part of me is miffed that this is how time is spent on the taxpayer’s nickel, I realize that politics is hardly a perfect business and some of these laws, strange as they may seem, make perfect sense in light of other laws already on the books (the cat felony proposal, for instance).

I wonder if there is also a proposal to recycle all of those fake, rubber mountain oyster bumper swingers – part of the new Environmental Bill, maybe?

{NOTE: By the time you read this, things may have changed, but as of this writing, the above was being considered.}

Jeff is the straight man, hand firmly up Walter’s keister, moving the dummy’s mouth without moving his own. But this dummy, Walter, I just can’t place him. He’s like someone I know. So familiar. It has been bothering me.

My Uncle Ernest? No. Walter’s more like an angry Sam Drucker (for you Boomers who watched “Petticoat Junction” and “Green Acres”). Or Phil Silvers (now I’m reaching way back into the rerun bin). Maybe Ed Sullivan? Ehhh, possible but not exactly.

Okay, I know. Walter looks like Dick Cheney with a sense of humor (and someone else’s hand up his rear moving his mouth, for an ironic change). No, wait, I’ve seen this dummy on the Supreme Court, or was it a court show on TV? Or was it Dick Vitale on a basketball court? I know I’ve seen this guy before.

No, no, I got it. Is it Senator Craig, the distinguished gentleman from stall number four. What’s that tapping sound?

Walter has a slight resemblance to a minister, maybe, until he opens his foul mouth (okay, he doesn’t open his mouth, Jeff does, but that’s just semantics).

I have known a few CEOs who were like this character; a couple of weathermen, maybe, on local TV stations in countless cities across America. That could just be the bowtie, though.

This is frustrating. He has the tact of Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog (on Conan O’Brien) and the wardrobe of Jesse Helms, the humor of Archie Bunker and the hair of, well, he has no hair. He’s bald. Okay, yes, I wasn’t going to say it but he does bare a resemblance to Rudy Giuliani. No joke, Google Rudy and put his pic next to Walter’s. Uh huh. Scary, isn’t it?

I would have said Fred Thompson, but Walter looks more like Rudy than Fred. Walter doesn’t look at all like Mitt Romney or Obama or Hillary (unless you shaved Hillary’s head, but her funky laugh is funnier than some of Walter’s jokes – listen for her laugh in an interview). Shaving several women’s heads might produce a Walter in the bunch. But shaving Rosie O’Donnell wouldn’t do
it, however. How about Nancy Grace? Now we’re talking.

If you turn your head ever so slightly, Walter does look like that guy – the hurricane expert – on The Weather Channel. Dr. Steve Lyons? Dr. Steve seems so much nicer, and I’ve never seen anyone moving his lips.

This is the allure of dummies: They look like all kinds of people we know – especially on TV. And TV is where one dummy looks like the next one. It’s hard to tell the dummies without a program.

So many dummies, so few ventriloquists.

Since politics is actually a branding game these days with so many candidates running for president, it’s a hypercompetitive, constant campaignfest, and every one of those presidential wannabes is looking for buckets of Glue to stick them and their message to voters.

They try to fling sticky sound bites into microphones and across stages and at each other in debates. They launch Internet sites to talk and listen and blog and raise money. This is social networking your way to the Oval Office with a digital flourish. The very social media phenomenon that macaca’d Senator George Allen (R, VA) out of Congress is being viewed as the diametric opposite by these new candidates. They have MySpace pages and Facebook presence where supporters can blog and campaign and say good things about them until the ballots come home. If they can’t Glue their platform to the electorate, they’re parched peanuts.

If a candidate is serious, they have to be YouTubing and podcasting, monitoring and riding that 24-7 stream of constantly changing plasma known as the American psyche. Stump speeches are now Blackberried and iPoded. Ads are less polished, more real, and aim to make the candidate look like your best friend soon to be in high places.

Some companies have been doing this for a while, albeit not always with the desired results. GM has more blogs than Castro has cigars, yet it still hasn’t found the Glue that Toyota seems to squirt at will. And Hyundai is Gluing like there’s no tomorrow. Budweiser is sinking millions into BudTV.com, creating programming and hoping for some kind of social network love connection with its audience. As you read this, thousands more companies have tossed digital darts into the ether hoping something sticks. Regular people are creating websites that are better than any show on TV.

Apple and a few others have it down, but if you took the American companies that are not working on social media and networking plans and put them end-to-end, they would stretch to all the way to Pluto and back here to the offices of the very people who de-planetized the lonely spacerock last year.

If candidates understand it, corporate American needs to figure this out, because this election is the beta test for how to build the new total communication future. And it’s more than a company blog, as John Edwards, candidate for president, just found out when he had to fire a couple of his paid bloggers for angering some religious groups.

People listen to real bloggers, not adbloggers. They watch YouTube videos instead of popups because they know the gig. Even kids are smart enough to know when they’re being sold. This is old news. If you’re blogging your message, make room for their conversation too, because the one-way street of the past is now a tangle of constant conversations going back and forth like a cocktail party. And you can put your Glue in those conversations too. It fits nicely.

Sticky bloggers aren’t any easier to wrangle than a herd of cats. Blogs gained traction in the first place because bloggers were so cantankerously independent and said what they felt like saying. Social networking is not as clean as you may want , but just because you don’t understand it doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. It works amazingly well. Ask George Allen.

Glue is powerful stuff. It’s not just a connection, it’s a message and a medium and a reality and a perception and a thing that can be measured if you have the right tools. Glue is invisible and totally visible, like wind. It can cool your day or blow your house down. It’s a plow and a sword and an AK-47 and an iPod. It’s also a smile and a toy and a big bonus check when your stock rips the roof off the exchange.

Nobody really understands exactly how this social media usage will play out in politics. But they’re going into the mix full-tilt, keyboards snapping, in hopes that they will align the candidate perfectly with the voters and Glue the whole thing in place. And they’re hoping those connections allow their applicant to fill the biggest job opening in the free world.

Social media is hot right now and some people understand it better than others. Technology is always like this. There are always a few of us who jumped on the fresh horse a long time ago.

During this election, will social networking efforts reach the tipping point Mr. Gladwell talked about and turn into a manageable medium? It is likely.

One thing is more likely, however – no matter what tool they used to spread it, whoever wins will be the one who has the Glue.

Glue is still the cash that stays in the wallet of human behavior, and only voters can spend that currency. Glue is the trust-ability and believability that causes connect-ability and therefore gives elect-ability. Glue has that ability. Without Glue, the candidates just have a bunch of electronic clutter feeding varying levels of lose-ability.

Teddy Roosevelt had Glue. FDR and Kennedy had Glue. Even though the pundits joked about Reagan being Teflon, he understood Glue better than the Gorilla Glue manufacturers. Clinton had Glue that was so sticky, it held him in office and in the hearts of Americans through some other sticky situations. LBJ needed Glue. Truman only got Glue after he was out of office. Nixon couldn’t find Glue at an Elmer’s factory and George W., who had an Oval office-full a few years ago, misplaced his tube.

If you want to be president of the country or president of the PTA, you need Glue.

A trip to Iraq can also polish the old Congressional resume, too, even if the polish is short on shine. Example: South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham spent two weeks in Iraq decked out in fatigues with a pistol strapped to his side. This photo op garnered a headline proclaiming Sen. Graham as the “only member of Congress to serve in Iraq.”

I know a young man who has spent a year over there (actually serving in the hot zones without a Congressional security detail) and is headed back for another year soon. Think he would trade his two-year stint of service for Senator Graham’s two weeks?

But that’s not the point. So what is the point? Used to be that you actually had to serve to get credit for, well, serving. Now, two weeks and a smile will get you a hero’s welcome, well, if you punch your timecard at the capitol.

I used this gauge on my own diligent service.

I am now a full-fledged member of the NFL, having been to several games and even on the field twice with Hall of Famers. I played H.O.R.S.E. with Michael Jordan, so I may be up for the NBA Hall of Fame myself. I went to the capital last year, so, using the Graham method of service calculation, I think I may start voting on Congressional bills when they go back in session. I have a little flag lapel pin. I have white hair. I just need to comb it and shave. No biggie.

Do my dozens of visits to Civil War battlefields, spending days roaming amongst the trenches and earthworks, make me a Civil War veteran? Can I get benefits from the Screen Actors Guild for all those DVD’s we’ve rented at Blockbuster over the years?

My Jack Russell, Rudy, was with me on a trip last weekend. We pulled into an interstate rest stop and we (he on a leash, naturally) went to the restroom. As I stood in the stall, I looked down and noticed Rudy tapping his foot and running his paw under the stall divider. What the heck? Next thing I know, Rudy is representing the great state of Idaho in Congress.

He leaves for his two-day junket to Iraq next week.

This blog is not long enough to contain all the ugly Southern Revenge stories I’ve seen and heard and read. Edgar Allan Poe was a Southerner, remember?

Southern politicians have made an art of revenge. Southerners make good soldiers, coaches and writers because of this trait. When you see a sweet Southern grandmother, just remember, she keeps her revenge right below that gentle drawl and she can whip it out and snap a pop-knot upside your head faster than Barney can load his bullet.

Revenge may be a dish best served cold, but in the South, it don’t get cold that often, so we serve it up hot with a side order of chicken fried pickles. The revenge buffet serves payback pie, gittin’ yers salad, retribution beef, what goes around casserole, just desserts, karma-candied yams and sweet revenge, 24-7.

Scientists in England did a study last year and determined that men are more apt to exact revenge for a perceived slight than women.

Note to guys: Don’t believe this.

Women are particularly good at extracting their pound of flesh. Southern women have Ph.D’s. Hell, indeed, hath no fury like a woman scorned. A Southern woman scorned? Go North, young man. And you may not even know what scorns her, either. However, once she gets all scorned up, don’t close your eyes or turn your back.

Case in point: Lorena Bobbit. Case in point: The wife who caught he husband cheating and super-glued little Elvis to his stomach while he slept. Case in point: The old boy’s bass-boat-off-the-overpass trick.

Bass boats seem to be particularly good targets for revengeful Southern women. Lesson: If you want to cheat, sell your bass boat first. And sleep on your stomach. Better Lesson: Don’t cheat on a Southern woman. Better advice you will never get, guaranteed.

As a culture, Southerners honed their vengeful skills in the aftermath of the Civil War. Burnings and terror and the Klan are all sick Southern forms of revenge. No matter what color, everybody got in on a little revenge in some way.

The region felt relegated to second-class citizen status after Appomattox, at least until we discovered competition. Southerners got revenge by trying to win at several chosen activities: College football, NASCAR, cooking, strokes and heart attacks. In the last two, Southerners have no equal. The ultimate Southern revenge, however, may be the nationwide success of Wal-Mart.

All of that said, not all Southern Revenge is bad. Blues, jazz and rock and roll all started in the South and all have some founding in revengeful motive whether sorrowful or belligerent. Southern barbecue has a little revenge in its history — well, if you’re a pig. You see, pigs are considered one of the smarter animals on earth next to us. Southerners found a way to one-up their smart-oinked neighbors: We eat them. Keep that in mind if you cross a hungry Southerner.

The Allman Brothers Band did an album called Southern Revenge live at the Fillmore East on June 26, 1971, in NYC. On that album you get Statesboro Blues, One Way Out, In Memory of Elizabeth Reed, Whipping Post, You Don’t Love Me / Soul Serenade. Revenge is sweet and bitter, all at the same time because Duane Allman was killed almost four months later to the day.

Southern women don’t have a lock on revenge. Southern men can dish out their share (as Neil Young wailed). Here’s one from this past year. In Richmond Va., a disgruntled ex-boyfriend wanted revenge so bad against his former girlfriend, he distributed (on the windshield of parked cars in shoppin centers) DVDs of his ex-girlfriend having sex with him. That’s sketch. That’s revenge. That got him put in jail, which is, I reckon, revenge in itself.

Revenge is part of the Southern historical fabric. After all, technically, Montezuma was a Southerner and his name has become more than synonymous with the “R” word.

(Sung to the tune of the Notre Dame Fight Song)

Corn, Corn for Old Andy High
You bring the whiskey
I’ll bring the rye
Send those Juniors out for gin
Don’t let a sober Senior in
We stagger on but we never fall
We sober up on wood alcohol
When we’re through
We’ll burn the school
For the Glory of A. H. S.

Think I’m lying? Check it out for yourself:

http://www.andalusia.k12.al.us/AHS

(Click on Tradition on the left.)

In an ultra-conservative state that is still fighting to keep the Ten Commandments in courtrooms, that little dittie must stir up some dysfunctional grief between the pews and the greenfront (slang for Alabama’s state-owned liquor stores). But there it stands, a fight song that could certainly cause a butt-tangling conflagration amongst all kinds of people these days.

I remember standing on a football field and hearing that rousing tune bouncing off my back from the packed stands as we beat some hapless team half to death with our grinding wishbone. I wonder now what those teams across the field thought as they were being systematically run over by a team whose fans were singing, “We stagger on but we never fall! We sober up on wood alcohol!” at the top of their liquored-up lungs?

We filled up the old stadium every Friday night back in the day, too. SRO. Not sure it was the constant winning that lured them to the lights (we went six years without losing a regular season game) or the fight song (with promises of corn squeezins and rot gut shine). But if you wanted to rob somebody, Friday night would have been the time to do it because nearly the entire 10,000 people who lived in Andalusia would be at Municipal Stadium, — Home of the Andy Bulldogs (Andy was short for Andalusia, in case you haven’t deciphered that shorthand yet). It was a glorious time made all the more glorious because most of us never gave even a rudimentary thought to the words of that fight song. We just sang it.

Now, 30 years later, I read those words and try to imagine my kids singing that song at games today. No doubt, some politician with a compunction to get crossways of the lyrics and the power to do something about it will scrape those old, stinging words off the song and replace them with the most politically corrected, group-thunk, pansy-sounding, vanilla verbiage imaginable. And then when I go back one day as an old man, I’ll get to hear this:

Rah, Rah for Old Andy High
You bring the sugar-free, diet soda
I’ll bring the ice
Send those Juniors out for fast food
Don’t let an academically ineligible Senior through
We carry on with high SATs
We say the right thing and aim to please
When we’re through
We’ll blame the school
Cause we have no guts anymore

I vote to leave it alone. After all, who is really listening to those words anyway? It took me 30 years to look at them.