VOTE for EDWIN!

I dropped by the feed store yesterday to fetch home some deer corn, (it being the cheapest source I can find for making corn mash likker.)

Edwin Black handed me a cigar and asked me if I’ll vote for him in the coming election as a state rep. Now, I have to say that kinda startled me, since Edwin’s been hatin’ politicians for years, calling them everything but white and saying he’d never vote again.

Ah took his cigar, (and an extra for the wife – hey, she’s old enough to vote, just barely), before asking him what’s going on? He explained with some enthusiasm that he’d had a vision, like in a dream, and that God had told him to run for state rep. Well, that’s pretty hard to argue with, so I asked him to tell me more. (I was just grateful it was his dream and not mine!)

He said, “You know how I used to say I won’t vote again until there’s a Confederate flag over the state capital?”

“Yup.”

“Well, it come to me, all of a sudden, that if me and forty other fellers of like mine were to git elected to the legislature, then when the idee comes around to a bill of secession, we might kin pass it.”

I was stunned. I knew Edwin hadn’t taken an oath of allegiance to the Yankee flag since he’d graduated from high school. (That was a couple of years after he got out of the army.) I asked him, “Edwin, don’t they still require you to take an oath of allegiance to that flag?”

He laughed, “Yeah, but that’s not a problem any more. I was talkin to my cousin, LeeRoy, and he said it all depends on what ‘is’ actually ‘is’. I don’t quite understand that, but he told me it’s a quote from a famous Southern president. He said it means that words mean what you want’em to mean, and if you swear loyalty to a Republic that no longer exists, but MIGHT exist if you get elected and we secede, then that’s what it means.”

“And you think you’ll win by campaigning on a promise to secede from the union?”

“Heck, no,” he laughed. “My momma didn’t raise no fool. I’ll win on a platform of givin’ more benefits to every voter than my opponent. Nobody expects a politician to tell the truth anyway, so there’ll be no surprises there. But once I’m elected, it’ll be fun to sit there and listen to them metrosexual city legislators propose more controls over us dumb farmers, and then vote no on every bill that comes down the pike. That is, until one of us introduces a bill to nullify some Yankee law, or when there’s enough of us, to withdraw from the Union.”

“But Edwin,” I protested, “everybody in this county already knows you won’t join the Tea Party because they’re too liberal for you.”

“I know,” he said, “but the people in the other counties don’t, and in that one big city I’m gonna campaign as a liberal democrat and promise more welfare that LBJ ever dreamed of!. “It’s a dual campaign, really. My theme everywhere will be, ‘Takin’ Care of Home Folks.’ In the city that will mean free fried chicken or catfish, cell phones and likker every Saturday night, if they vote for me and I win. Small price to pay, once the lobbyists start comin’ around.”

“And locally?”

“It’s the same theme, but hereabouts Ah’m promisin’ a free sack of laying pellets (or deer corn!) to all my customers, IF AH WIN. And Ah think Ah’m gonna be a shoe-in.”

“Yeah, well Edwin, you told me to not vote any more, so I’m not voting.”

“Ha!” He laughed, handed me a voter registration card, and said, “You are now, my boy, and just remember – if at first you don’t secede, try, try again!”

“But, what about all them guns and ammo we been stashing in the barn for the Third American Revolution?”

“Might not need’em, but this way we’ll be keeping all our options open, Bubba! Meanwhile, fastest way to get there is to recapture the state house so we can speed this process up.”

“We still holding target practices?”

“Kinda,” smiled Bubba, “only now they’re gonna be turkey shoots around the district, every Saturday until the election.”

I got my corn and as I shook hands and told Edwin I would vote for him, he snagged both cigars out of my pocket and said, “Ah already got your vote. Ah’m gonna need these for the low-information-voters. Thanks, Pal!”

If he wants me to put a sign up in my yard, I’m gonna ask for my cigars back. And if the next legislature introduces a bill of secession, I’ve no doubt my friend, Edwin, will be there to support it. Won’t the governor be surprised?

Anyway, like they say, when it comes to politics, things are not always as they seem.