Stuffed Crab...

I have been going to Savannah since I was in highschool. There is just something about its god awful coastal smell that is intoxicating to me. Regardless of where we are staying, the first thing I have to do is ride down Bay street, then take the Islands expressway to hwy 80 then head out to Tybee island... When I get to the corner of Islands & 80 I always let the window down. The weather doesn't matter, one hundred twenty degrees or forty degrees.. it makes no difference. I have to let that salt marsh stench wash over me in the car. In some strange way it always feels like coming home.

Many trips have been made to that magical place over the years. I fell in love with its voodoo and humid sensuality when I was a young man. I love the beach, yet I'm not a traditional beach bum type of person. I hate heat and humidity. I spend my beach time walking in the water starting around midnight and then end it each morning by watching the sunrise from the end of the pier on Tybee island.

I can not be trusted to actually get on the water with any sort of flotation device. One night, while staying at the ocean plaza, I "borrowed" one of the big canvas floats from the lifeguard station, paddled out and laid back to enjoy the view of the stars... I woke up a while later with a tiny strip of lights off in the distance. Hoping it was in fact the shore line, I began heading in that direction. That's when you get the fear... Every image from jaws & movies of that ilk begins to become amazingly clear and possible in your mind and you know damn well that there is some sort of huge whale, shark, harpy thing right on your ass, making your paddling become more desperate with each passing second... I made it back to shore with no problems, but passed a buoy on the way in... Yes, I had drifted into the shipping lanes... But.. if you have never seen the stars that far out on the ocean at night.. I must say, it was well worth the danger. I was scolded pretty harshly on another trip by a few lifeguards for riding rip tides all day... I can't help it.. when they are strong enough they can carry you way out, but they always bring you right back to shore, you just never know where... But a ride like that is well worth a bit of a walk when you're done.

I've never really had a favorite place to eat there, I pretty much like them all. The crab shack is one of my favorites... The bar at Williams Seafood was another. They were famous for stuffed crab. I always had mixed emotions about eating there, the interior left a bit to be desired, it had a middle school cafeteria feel to it, and there was always a line to get in, I am not a line person. We had taken a trip down several years ago and I was really wanting some good seafood so decided to deal with the line. There was a church youth group ahead of us... The noseeums were out in force, to the point of drawing blood... and screaming babies were well represented.. While standing in line for about an hour, beeper in hand, desperately waiting for the thing to go off and scratching continuously at the noseeums while being serenaded by the youth group (one of them had gone back to their bus for a guitar) I had had enough. I went in to check on seating and the girl said, "About 45 minutes... but if you don't mind you can sit in the bar..." I started screaming at her, "Mind? You crazy teenage bitch! I have been standing in 98 degree, 100% humidity, bug filled air listening to horrible singing and bleeding from bug bites while treated to a toddler constantly pelting me with a balloon sword for the last hour!!! SEAT ME NOW!!!!" but it came out like this: "Sure.. that will be fine.." So we followed her through the place to a little side door and into paradise...

What met us when we walked through the door was a darkened little room with mounted fish on the wall, booths with high backs providing privacy and a little bar at one end with a short, wizened old man the color of a walnut standing behind it.. "Sit anywhere you like.." is what the barman said to us as the hostess tucked tail and vanished... We found a booth, most were empty, and sat down. The second we sat down a flurry of activity ensued... The wait staff attacked us and before we knew what had happened we were holding huge glasses of sweet tea, eating hush-puppies, waiting on food we ordered while enjoying the arctic blast from the air-conditioner as we strained to look out across the room at the other patrons through the dim lighting in the place...

The food arrived.. I had a grilled seafood platter with stuffed crab. Each item on the huge plate was grilled to perfection. Scallops, mahi mahi, shrimp... dear god... When I thought I could no longer take it.. They brought out the stuffed crab.. Now, if you have never had stuffed crab from Williams Seafood, then just forget about it.. you have never had stuffed crab. When the meal was over and we all felt as if we were about to explode we sat in a quiet daze and watched as the locals came and went through the side door. Eventually we were brought into the room's conversation and spent about three hours there listening to tales about Savannah and Tybee.. It was one of the best meals I've ever had. From that point forward, it was about the only place we ever ate there. We would pull up in the parking lot, look over at the line waiting to get in, grin slyly, then step around the side of the building, walk across the little patio, through the double doors and right to a seat... Perfection...

One of the last trips down we were driving past the place when I said, "What.. where... but.. no... dammit... the..." Then I stopped the car dead in the middle of the road.. Williams was gone... I found out later that it had burned down... Damn.. Just damn...

I've made the rounds, I like Mrs Wilkes dining room, I liked the Lady and sons until it developed a three hour wait to get in.. but then such is the price of fame... I wouldn't wait three hours for front row center seats to the second coming... But nothing can compare to the atmosphere and service of the bar at Williams, simply nothing... The Crab Shack is close, the food great.. but it just misses that certain something... Indeed.. the best trip we ever had there we stayed at the Beach and Racquet club... We stayed a week.. The place had a kitchen so we went shopping, my god seafood from the coast is just frightening it is so good.. We cooked our meals and ate in, did one thing each day and spent each night on the beach. We sat on the balcony and watched the freighters come in the international water way and allowed the ocean breeze to wash over us until the sun rose, then went to bed... To spend an early spring day Exploring Bonaventure Cemetery, eat a huge grouper dinner, walk on the beach for hours, then see a sunrise like that. Excellent.

The days I've spent in that city have brought many experiences my way. The nights even more. I made the trip to Beaufort to visit Dr Buzzards grave once and came away a different person. I have walked Bull Street from one end to the other and gone in every home and business that would have me. I've eaten at every restaurant there, taken every tour, walked the old tunnel from the pirates house to out under the streets, and spent many hours in deep conversation with an old black man in a wheelchair down on River Street that made his living playing a saxophone. I got to introduce my son to him on one trip, that was a moving moment. We had talked many years ago about life and family, seeming to pick up the conversation on each trip right where we left off... I always found him when I was waiting on Julie while she visited all the shops. The only one I go to is River Street Sweets for a banana smoothie and box of pralines, (the smoothie isn't on the menu, but they will make you one...) We would sit down by the water around the full rigged ship that always seemed to be docked there. He told me all about the Vietnam war and how he lost his family. He told me about River Street and it's history. I remember him telling me that I was too impatient when I told him I didn't think I would ever have a family... When he met Patrick he winked over Patrick's shoulder to me and mouthed, "I told you so." Yes, I teared up.

I was hanging around the visitors center one night when a guy asked me if I wanted a carriage ride. I said sure and hopped on... We did the usual ride around the historic district, until he was off work. Yet we kept going. I sat on my knees, leaning over his seat as he told me all about Savannah's history. For hours we poked through that city and I learned more than I ever would from any book. He was a retired salesman who worked for his wife's tour company. I was young, maybe nineteen or so and he gave me several names of people to contact that opened many doors around the city for me to hear about its history, that was a good trip. That was before they closed Bonaventure at night and you could walk around there under the live oaks covered with moss and listen to the dead as they told their tales. Those darkened, sandy roads in that place hold more life than many cities I've been in.

Sitting here in Newnan, in front of this keyboard, I have the feeling that it's time to get back down there. James is in need.. He's never seen the ocean, eaten 'baby chicken' fresh from the ocean (that's what Patrick called shrimp on his first trip there, hey.. it worked, he tried it...), walked on cobble stones laid down hundreds of years ago by slaves, both black and Irish, and he needs to see what this region of the country is all about... magic, pure ass magic...

Me? I just need a little voodoo and a damn good stuffed crab...

**the painting i used is by David Boyd Jr. go check his work out**

Fifty two years worth of Mothers Days

My mother was born on the fourth of April in 1935, the youngest of ten children. Her parents were William, known as "Buddy", and Fannie West. My grandmother's maiden name was McGee, so Irish descent was a given... Everyone called my grandfather Buddy, but to all of us he was Pa, to his wife he always known strictly as William. Pa was a farmer when my mother was born, but later on was hired by the county to build bridges. Granny was a homemaker, a stern woman, well known for her soft and tender emotional side (just like mom). They lived on what is now known as Buddy West road. Their house is still there, a subdivision was built next to it a few years ago and the turning lane is cut into the front yard, developers are so nice that way. Every time I drive by there I look at that little yard and think about how vast it was when I was a child and we went over there every Sunday for dinner. Granny never cut her hair, but always wore it tied into a meticulously tight bun. My mother told me that she would take it down and comb it every night and that it "nearly touched the floor." Granny passed away when I was a child in the first or second grade. We came home from school one day and the house was full of people, I wanted my mother, but nobody would let me go see her. My cousin Syble took me and my brother out on the front porch and told us that mom was lying down, then told us that granny had passed away, the look on her face as she told us is one thing I will never forget, one of the tenderest moments in my life. We rode our bikes around the neighborhood for the rest of the day in that strange daze that follows such tragedies.

My mother was christened Trudy Dean West as a baby and set off on a life surrounded by four boys and five other girls. She never went in for anything too girlie and spent her time playing cowboys and indians with all the boys around the house. "We played whatever we saw at the movies on Saturday for that entire week, until we went back the next weekend..." She would get dropped off in town by her dad at a relatives house down near the bridge on Lagrange street and all the kids would walk to the Alamo theater to see a movie, and then spend the rest of the day riding bikes around Newnan until Pa would come by to pick them all up. Mom told me once that one of her favorite times when she was a kid was when the cotton would come in and the barn would be packed with bales of the fluffy white stuff. They would spend countless hours jumping from the loft door into the cotton piled all around before Pa had it shipped off to market.

In school mom played on the basketball team and was a member of the beta club. Sports allowing girls were limited at the time and mom always went in for any sport she could... Every year that she played on the basketball team they went to the state tournament, she is always good at what she does. She has bowled and played golf all of her life. Even after a stroke in recent years she still goes bowling and plays golf. Her vision was damaged by the stroke a bit but as she says, "I can still see the marks on the bowling lane, even if I can't see the pins like I should...." Every year she played on the church softball team, earning her the the moniker "Mama Dean."

They attended Happy Valley Baptist church, also on Buddy West Rd., just as my fathers family did, Buddy and Fannie West were good friends with Doc and Zeddie Perry. Mom's brother William, Uncle "C" to me, was friends with my dad and they ran around together as kids... It was a fateful night when uncle C had a date with Annie Jo, one of moms friends. Annie Jo suggested a double date... Uncle C tapped dad to go with them and my parents were together from then on. They graduated high school in June of 1953 and got married that December. Mom and dad lived on Savannah street in Newnan for a while then lived in an apartment on Madison street until they bought a little house on Martin street where they lived for the next nineteen years, bringing five children into the world. When I was in the second grade they built and moved into the house where mom still lives on Doc Perry road. Mom and dad were married for 54 years until dad passed away a couple of years ago.

Mom worked for Royal Molded Products in Newnan from the get go, she was in charge of inventory control in the office. Royal molded made toilet seats... the sawdust pressed, unpainted toilet seats made good kindling for the fireplace in the winter, and mom would periodically bring home a truckload... I think we were some of the few kids that could actually say, "We had to bust up toilet seats for the fireplace.." when asked what we did over the weekend... We also discovered that they slid great on ice during a huge winter storm when I was a kid...

My mother worked full time, no small feat when you have five children. She hired a woman that helped raise us, Mamie Steagall, an older black woman that couldn't read or write, and didn't know how old she was, she didn't even know when her birthday was.. But she could cook like you wouldn't believe.. Mom would leave in the morning and go pick up Mamie and bring her to the house then head off for work. Each evening she would take Mamie home or to town or wherever it was Mamie needed to go. For years mom paid Mamie half of her salary she made at Royal. When we moved out here to Doc Perry road Mamie was older and had part of a foot removed because of diabetes, but still barked orders to us with her usual gusto. "Ya'll go play outside, my program is coming on.." was a favorite order she gave. Three things about Mamie will stick with me forever, she always had me a glass container of ice water ready in the refrigerator when I got home from school (it was an old coffee cup from the hospital, that now resides in a place of honor in my cabinet), she always put an ice cube in the soup she made us for lunch so it wouldn't be too hot (I think of that every time I see a can of campbells chicken noodle soup), and she made the best fried pies...

My mother has always been the type of person that is active and level headed, a meticulous record keeper. She never has taken much crap from anyone and will simply tell you what you've done wrong and expect you to correct it immediately, yet her heart is as loving as you can get. Several years ago she had chest pains, turned out she had to have a quadruple bypass... They put her in the hospital and then took her to Piedmont in Atlanta for the operation. The worry in my dad's eyes as we waited for hours while she was being operated on sat pretty deep with me, all that time together to be faced with such a crisis, I couldn't imagine. He walked around with her x rays rolled up in his hand and paced the floor nonstop. When she came out of recovery and was asked how she felt she said, "I dreamt about toilet seats, of all the things in the world to dream about..." When she got home she began her recovery almost as soon as she walked in the door... She's always been a fighter. The occasional tearing up here and there is when I knew she was emotional, she's the queen of keeping herself in check. When my father passed away she was standing next to his casket the funeral home and said, "He drove me crazy, but I do love him so, now get up old man and lets just go home..." That was the hardest thing I think I have ever witnessed, but it is a testimony to the amount of love that her heart can hold, five children, and a husband with a love for the unexpected (and huge explosions) could tell on a woman over the years, but with mom, her stoic nature wouldn't allow it to make her waver from what she had to do. She's always encouraged us to do what made us happy and to keep our feet on the ground at the same time.

Growing up there were always people in the house, my brothers and sisters friends when they were in school, our friends when me and my brother were in school. Family and friends on Friday nights playing cards and people over for cookouts almost every weekend for years and years. I've seen her handle guests in all manner, and she never wavered once. She loves a big crowd of people milling around the place, a product, I'm sure, of her childhood. But then, thats what a home is all about... Loud noises, mess, kids playing, scrapes, bruises, and an endless fountain of love...

From the silent eye roll and deep breath she let out as we stood on the porch and looked at the brand new convertible my dad just bought spur of the moment on the way home from work to the pride of a great grandmother as she watches my nephew's son play baseball, she has touched more lives with her ways than I think she realizes. We spent yesterday with her for Mothers Day, and I told my brothers I wanted a picture taken with her... She then ran to town with my wife to get coffee and hit a few stores. While they were gone I sat on the porch and watched my son play in the yard as I thought about the life my mom has lived. She has been surrounded by people that love her, people that count on her, and people she feels deeply for.. I just hope she realizes how much she means to us all. I love you mom, happy Mothers Day...

The Belt road booger

It was one of those days where the sun felt as if it could peel the skin right off of you. I was young, maybe twelve or so, and we had been going all day. All manner of play had been engaged, bicycles, army, plastic army men sets, plinking cans with bb guns, working on the dam down at the creek... Yet nothing would suffice.

There was an uneasiness in the air...

My grandparents were having a barbecue just down the road and we weren't invited. It had been revival week and they were throwing a huge get together for their pastor and their entire church was on hand. I was jealous. These were my grandparents, my barbecue shed, my hickory fire they were shoveling coals out of to smoke the meat... Who were those people going in and out of my grandparents house? Who were all those kids down there playing on my stomping grounds? No sir, I didn't like it... not one bit...

Unfortunately for me and my brother, Daddy Doc (my grandfather) and granny's house was downhill from our place so we got to watch the thing unfold before us. Every game we indulged in throughout the day always seemed to end up with us at the edge of our front yard looking down their with half confused and slightly envious glares at the kids running around in the yard. Car load after car load of the ugliest people you ever saw kept driving by looking all happy... I was getting down right ill. We finally asked my parents if we could go down there, they didn't care so we took off without a second thought. I was uncomfortable... Those kids had no idea that you couldn't go in Daddy Doc's smoke house... why wasn't he getting on to them? There were strange people drinking out of the ancient gray igloo water cooler on his back porch... He kept an old beat up metal dipper hanging next to the kitchen door that you drank out of.. And some of these people were actually using it.. My god.. that was for family... The whole thing wasn't right, it set me off and left me feeling too out of place... After a while I just wandered off wishing it was the fourth of July & everything was right with the world again.... This mess was going to take some fixing.. But dumbass (my brother) knew some of the kids from the church and decided to stay on.

I felt dejected... As evening rolled in and the festivities went on apace I sat at the edge of the yard cussing my brother for having fun and watching all these miscreants eat my damned barbecue. When darkness finally fell they actually started singing down at the barbecue shed, what nerve... That was it, I couldn't take any more of this.. I went and sat on the back deck in the swing and just listened to all those happy voices singing about god, at least from there I had to strain to see it.. When my brother got home I was going to let him have it... Having fun down there with strange people messing everything up... lord god, what was wrong with people?

I went inside and sat around feeling all gruff and began "poking my lip out".... My dad looked at me and said, "Boy, whats wrong with you now?" I just sat in stunned silence... how could he be that dense? I explained what was going on and he looked over the top of his paper at me and said, "Oh good lord..." Which was dad speak for be quiet... So I continued to sit there watching whatever gun smokey type tv program my parents were all into until my brother came home all excited...

He was going a mile a minute and bouncing off the walls jabbering on about some monster he had just seen standing at the dirt road halfway between our house and granny's. A monster? With the mention of a monster all thought of the day's malfeasance slipped away quickly... He would not stop until we walked down there... "It was standing right there by that little pine tree" The 'dirt road' was the original road bed for Doc Perry road, it ran all the way from Macedonia road to Sargent many years ago, but the county came out one summer to "fix it" and drove a tractor over the old bridge on panther creek and the thing fell in on them. They came back and got the tractor, but never fixed the bridge, so everything just grew up and swallowed the road whole... That was ok by us, it gave us an exciting place to play with lots of jagged edges and rusty nails poking out.. Not to mention it was right in the middle of the swamp so was automatically classified as haunted... Everybody needs a haunted place to go play at when you're a kid.

He said that it was as tall as the tree, about five feet or so, and looked like a dog thing, but was standing up on two legs "just looking at me with shiny eyes". Then it "took off running back into the woods"... I wanted to mount an armed safari type hunt right then and there but dad was having no part of it... Dad walked around and looked at the ground with a flashlight and announced after a few minutes of study that whatever was there was gone now... Two things bothered me about that moment, one - dad scrubbed the ground all around there with his foot when he stood up and two - he said "Whats that peculiar odor?" under his breath when he came back over to the road.. We were standing in the middle of the road watching as he investigated the scene, I was ready to hit the woods but he shooed us back up to the house then held a whispered conversation with mom in the kitchen. All this suspicious behavior had our minds racing.. We sat out on the back deck and pondered what it all meant while listening to the woods for any sort of sign that a dog beast was afoot...

For several days after that my brother suffered an endless line of taunting from our older siblings for having seen "big foot." At first he defended it, then he became all sulky and quiet about the entire thing. Then the following Thursday when the local paper came out the excitement started all over again....

"Belt Road Booger spotted"

"Several sightings of a “monster” sighted on Belt Road near the intersection of West Washington Street were reported last week.

“It was dark. It stands about five feet tall. It’s big across the chest. Its eyes look like diamonds at night when you shine a light on them,” was how one local woman described the “monster.”

The creature was reported to have “a face like a monkey and a long bushy tail.”

The Newnan Police Department investigated the incident but found nothing.

The creature was “alleged to have eaten the inside of an apple, leaving only the peeling, and to have bitten a hunk out of an ear of corn.” It was also supposed to have climbed into a barn in the neighborhood, and some local children speculated that he slept in some junked cars in the woods near Belt Road.

The Belt Road Booger was spotted again in the Meadowview subdivision near Arnco, described by one local resident as “the ugliest looking thing I’ve ever seen.”

She described the animal as standing between 4 and 5 feet tall, and it was covered with black hair and a tail “like a beaver’s, but it’s bushy,” with “a face like a dog.”

She said the creature dug into her flowers and tried to kill her caladiums.

Sightings were reported in the following days in the Smokey Road and Ishman Ballard Road areas, and then later at Sargent."

Let me tell you... the word smug doesn't even come close to describing the expression he wore for several weeks after that one... I never did go out there looking around for any signs of the monster... I'm kind of glad I didn't.. I have found a rather odd sense of comfort over the years in imagining a strange set of tracks creeping away from the spot my dad brushed clean leading down to the swamp toward that old bridge...

Speaking of politics...

This weekend we were on the square in Newnan selling our goods and talking to people when we were approached by Kieth Tompkins. Kieth was out pressing the flesh and getting signatures so he could be on the ballot to represent Georgia's 70th district in the General Assembly. He was speaking with the people next to us and we heard much of the conversation. Then he stopped by our booth... the conversation we had inspired me to wax political, its been a few days...

It's no secret that I lean to the right in my political opinions. I believe firmly in three things.

One - a limit of two terms for all elected officials from the local to the state to the federal level. (knee jerk response - "we need experienced people in there")

Two - abolish income taxes and put the fair tax in place. (knee jerk response - "its regressive")

Three - bio fuels. (knee jerk response - "it uses more energy to produce that it turns out")

I am unapologetic in these views and haven't heard a decent argument against any of them. Term limits would get rid of career politicians, the fair tax would unleash the true economic potential of this country, and fuel can be made from algae and kudzu that would run any type of engine. Period... end of debate.

I say I lean to the right because I believe in a small government and a ridiculously strong military. The federal government should be about one tenth of its current size and individual states should fully handle pretty much everything except for a national military. I do not think that things like a national endowment for the arts or a U.S. department of education should exist. I do not think that the federal government should get involved in business and should not charge corporations income taxes. I believe that anyone who has the balls to start a business should be exempt from current taxes in general, because these businesses provide jobs. I believe that any citizen of this country that wants to be armed should have that right freely.

Each one of these points is a post in itself and I have debated them all time and again. The problem with a debate is that its hard to find someone who can discuss these things in a civil manner. I have talked to the farthest right and the farthest left of the political spectrum, and I can say without any fear that the left is much nastier than the right. I can also make this unbelievable statement: The right is much more inclusive than the left.

In regards to what you read on line and see in televised media, the truth of the political situation is a different animal when you are where the rubber meets the road. That is true of pretty much anything in general though.

When you are speaking with a group of people that lean to the right you can carry on a conversation, even when you disagree with them. Most of them speak intelligently about issues and seem to know more details than your average person on the left. Most of the people on the left simply parrot Jon Stewart, who is entertaining yes, but hardly a person to garner your political or current event information from. He is to the left what Limbaugh is to the right - a fount of misinformation. They both provide half truths and work through innuendo. When speaking with a group of left leaning people I can count on getting yelled at and insulted. Yet only when I mention a political party or politician that I agree with. Oddly enough, if you speak only of policies, they tend to agree with what you say. They hardly ever realize you're talking about things that people like Bush, Reagan, or god forbid, Sarah Palin have mentioned and believe in. They just get caught up in the fad and fashion of hurling insults toward these people because that's what all the cool kids on twitter and facebook are doing. (speaking of which, I need to add that map thingy to my social networking accounts so people can see where I'm at all the time.. its so cool... "Clay is taking a shit" with a little google map & orange marker... interesting.. almost as much as where you're at eating dinner with the gang from the office @coolkideateryofchoice...) Fad and fashion... That's where most people reside... knee jerk emotional response is easy & takes no thought, thus on line pissing matches...

We've all seen "teabagger" videos of knuckle draggers who would just as soon slit someones throat as to look at them. Just as we have all seen the videos of people that vote democrat agreeing with Obama's position of completely outlawing abortion. There are total idiots on both sides of the spectrum. There are violent idiots dwelling in these places as well. We hear now about the hideous language being used by people that may insight rednecks and teabaggers to violence, but you just didn't hear too much about the people who hung Bush in effigy or attacked people for having a right leaning bumper sticker on their car... Media, it's all fair and balanced... I live in Georgia.. Georgia is in the dreaded south.. and I have not once heard President Obama referred to with a racial slur... imagine that. You would think that all my friends would stop nailing their sisters while she's cleaning their guns and washing their hoods and sheets long enough to call the man a nigger... but that hasn't happened.. not once.. even in the most vile of the teabagging circles I run in... Most of the long winded, uneducated, southern folk I know simply speak of his policies.. what the hell? According to bill maher , and indeed most popular media, we inbreds down here should all be loading our shotguns and planning a march on Washington while hoarding Budweiser and potted meat for the apocalypse ... Hmmm that fair and balanced view of humanity again...

So I find myself in a bit of a quandary... where do I go for a political home? The democrats and republicans seem awash in the money and power that public office hold. They don't seem to give much of a damn about anything except getting reelected while stockpiling cash, drugs and hookers... or lesbian bondage chicks...

I do not care if gay people get married, I do not care if a woman has an abortion, I do not care if a huge corporation fails, I do not want to hear about a national debt scale and military expense while my tax dollars go to fund a play that hasn't sold a ticket in YEARS or to preserve the first brick structure in a town (yes it is an outhouse) or to study how a fly can land upside down on a ceiling, or to fund a brother in law's construction company's bid on a federal project or etc etc... I am for a line item veto, I do not care if the ten commandments are on a wall, I am for testing teachers so that I don't get a note that says "James says he not feeling to good" from a teacher, it wouldn't bother me if weed or prostitution were legal everywhere, I would rather that people who are trying to kill me because of where I was born were destroyed outright with much malice, I would prefer a military presence on the border since our citizens get fired on by Mexican drug dealers and troops (isn't there some sort of law being broken there?), I do not fear Christians or atheists just zealots and they are plentiful from all sides of every theological or ideological genre...

It does seem that anywhere I go no one is all together on my side... But then when I am speaking to actual people it seems that most folks feel a lot like I do.

I applaud Keith Tompkins for being out there and speaking to people, he took the time to listen, he spoke his mind, he agreed, he disagreed, he was polite.. and interestingly enough... he seemed genuine. We agreed on enough points that come election time, I will vote for him, no problem...

Poplar hiking stick

Poplar-59"- leather wrist strap - $50

SOLD