The family atomic & me, we spent the past week at Pawley's Island, S.C. and are now back in "The I.C.," mowing the lawn, preparing for our move to Goosetown, and generally trying to take it easy before another week(s) of Working Man's Blues kicks in.
Vacations are cool. Especially vacations down South, and even more especially if that's where you're from. You play yr guitar on the beach, sip some moonlit tequila with your friends, squeeze yr sweet thang and compose a fried catfish villanelle - end up feelin' like Otis Redding maybe didn't die frigid, in vain, after all. And then, on the way home, the grandfatherly Blue Ridges stake you back down to terra firma, call you "boy," and make you weep for grandpa (deceased).
On a Southerly road trip, everything is cool as can be, sweeps you in and enfolds your kin. Then suddenly you're on yr way back to the midwest, realizing you're a middling 37, with impressionable children at a Cracker Barrel at the Kentucky-Indiana border and a 17 yr old wearing a thick wooden cross around his neck is asking if you want biscuits or corn muffins with your chicken.
Maybe you cringe a little inside. And then again maybe you laugh and jig a li'l spiritual rag top for the batty-assed dreaminess of it all. If you were to ask me, I'd say that to be "regional," in any sense, is a blessing anytime, anywhere, but most especially in the midst of the Kali Yuga.
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