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4A FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2006 Mans ttm Gaipj OPINION Daniel F. Evans Editor and Publisher Julie B. Evans Vice President Don Moncrief Managing Editor Is oil field discovery good news? It was billed as good news, no, “great” news. Oil companies Wednesday discovered a major oil field beneath the Gulf of Mexico. Hurray. It won’t save anyone anything at the pumps it was reported but it could boost U.S. Reserves by 50 percent. What a farce. Why? Because it builds false hope. Examine your own reaction when you read/heard the news. Didn’t it pick your spirits up just a bit? Here we are, prisoners of the Middle East, and this, this could remove some of the tape binding our hands or feet. Wrong. All this did was divert our attention away from the real issue: Finding a way to be free alto gether. It’s the same old, same old. Prices shoot through the roof. We get concerned - majorly con cerned. Then they come back down or something like the oil field discovery happens and suddenly our resolve goes from ... “we must do something about this” ... to “ah, it’ll be OK.” The reality is, it’s not OK. We need to keep our eye on the prize: Alternative fuels and being free forever of the grip of the Middle East - not to mention our very own billion aire oil companies. Heck, for all we know, and it’s entirely within the realm of possibility, oil companies knew it was there all along. Perhaps, with hybrid cars and ethanol hitting the market, they opened their wallet and instead of a billion and one dollars, they only counted a billion (and let’s not forget all they’ll prob ably have to strictly spend in conversions if the nation does go to an alternate fuel source). Sure, it may be a conspiracy theory. It, the discovery, may be good news, no “great” news. But what we’d like to see is “stupendous” news. We’d like to see a headline that reads: Free at last, free at last. Only then will we loose the shackles. And, oh by the way, we also won’t have to run the risk of damaging our planet any further. The map has it south of New Orleans. We’re obviously not experts here, but do you think the people of Louisiana relish the thought of an earthquake - or worse, a tsunami, in that area should the drilling result in some thing catastrophic? Worth Repeating “Our citizens have the right to protection from the incompetency of public employees who hold their places solely as the reward of partisan service, and from the cor rupting influence of those who promise and the vicious methods of those who expect such rewards; and those who worthily seek public employment have the right to insist that merit and competency shall be recognized instead of party subserviency or the surrender of honest political belief.” Grover Cleveland, 1837-1908 22nd & 24th President of the United States Send your Letters to the Editor to: The Houston Home Journal P.O. Box 1910 • Perry, Ga 31069 or Email: hhj@evansnewspapers.com Foy S. Evans Editor Emeritus Wrong. All this did was divert our attention away from the real issue: Finding a way to be free altogether. It’s the same old, same old. Prices shoot through the roof. We get concerned - majorly concerned. Then they come back down or something !Nus the oil field discovery hap pens and suddenly our resolve goes from ... "we must do something about this” ...to "ah, tm be Ok." Good for Pam at Roy's store There among the dusty art, genu ine antiques, and ancient rural junk, I spotted it. I wanted it - badly enough that I probably violated number 10 against coveting. I was will ing to pay to have it. What it was: an altogether appropri ate, but ironic, black on white, pen and ink, framed poster with two human figures, one with a guitar, and these words: “Delta Blues Festival, Freedom Village, MS, September 18, 1984”. Were the images on the poster white in a black country or were the artist and his female friend (a singer?) black in a white country, or perhaps the 1984 Mississippi couple was mixed? Impossible to tell, but much about which to speculate. Even I knew it was good work. And, I wanted it. Chatham, Miss., in the heart of the Delta. Northwest central Mississippi. Roy’s Store with pea-green advertising brochures proclaiming: cabins (small, medium, large, with and without decks, and some with a picnic table). There the cabins were, across the dusty road on a small lake, looking like so many one-pound-vacuum-packed Maxwell House Coffees turned on their sides - only the blue cabin with white painted numbers being baby rather than dark. And selling gasoline from grimy pumps and extolling a “deer cleaning area” and ice and groceries and a post office and a “small washer ette” and a bathhouse and even a place to buy your hunting and fishing licens es. Chatham’s answer to America’s Wal-Mart. All of my hunting companions had been there before, this being the kind of place to which you of necessity and of curiosity, return. These seasoned Roy’s customers knew that when you ordered your cheeseburger under the sign, “Order Here,” you were required to furnish your given name. A mistake I made, watched carefully by my fel lows, which delayed my eating until my w ßut we don't need to take politics out of redistricting now that we're the party in power!." My radio-punching Anger gets little rest Many traffic accidents are caused by a horrible crime that should be called “driving while dis tracted.” People steer two-ton vehicles down the street while talking on the phone, eating, drinking, applying makeup - I even see people on the interstate calm ly reading a novel or the newspaper at 65 mph. I try not to use my cell phone while driving. I refrain from eating in my car, though I remember the days of down ing a three-piece chicken box, white meat, complete with fries and slaw, while traveling across state. And I leave the mascara at home so I won’t look like the bozo ahead of me in traffic each morning who dabs, sprays and smears various colors of chemicals onto her hair and face. As for reading on the road, I can’t even keep up with the street signs, much less the latest Stephen King. Careful as I am, though, I do have a bad habit: I play the radio buttons like a concert piano, constantly switching from one station to the next, ever in pursuit of a song I can stomach. When a horrible song (which is to say, most songs on most stations) comes on, I punch one of the five buttons to take me to another station and maybe, just maybe, a listenable song. What’s this? Hip-hop? Punch! Girly-sounding boy band? Punch! Diva? Punch! , Bad country? Punch! Dance-beat drivel? Punch! OPINION Larry Columnist !walker@whgb-law.com HHmI failure was personally rectified. Was this “give your first name edict” from the two middle-aged African-American women doing the taking and cooking and serving, or was it a more ancient rule, from a time past, like “this is the way you do it at Roy’s in Chatham, Miss., if you want to eat”. And, at last, the delicious burger, made even more desired by an early morning dove shoot, sans breakfast. Eat it, I did, and all within a few feet of “bait” - minnows, worms, crick ets - being dispensed to anxious and optimistic anglers. All the while, I am eyeing “my” poster, up high and to my left. Time to pay. An opportunity to ques tion the cashier - a “20 something” female in jeans and a sleeveless shirt so as to accommodate the heat and to bet ter display the tattoo on the lower part of her right shoulder. Did it read “L. Elton”? “Is that black and white Delta Blues poster for sale?” “You’ll have to ask Pam, she’s the owner. I doubt she’ll sell it, but she’ll be back in a little while.” Hope is alive in the Delta. As we are leaving, I spot her. A pea green shirt on the body of a confidently moving woman - striding like someone knowing where she is going - like someone in charge - moving from the Tijuana-like cabins to my left to what I assume is the lynchpin of her empire, Roy’s Store. It had to be her. “Are you Pam,” I inquired rather tentatively. “Yes,” she responded as only a per son secure in her exalted place could respond. “I am interested in that black :— Moore I I mmM Suddenly, I hear a note or two and recognize a tune I like; my button punching finger freezes in midair. Yeah, that’s nice. My hand goes back to the wheel, just in time to steer around the roadside wreckage in which a severed arm still holds a can of hair spray. I know what kind of music I like; I just don’t know what to call it. Some of it is folk, some rock, some Western. I’ve heard it called Americana, but I don’t really know what that means. I just know that I appreci ate well-played instruments and lyrics that tell a story and are actually under standable. When my finger finds such a song, I listen all the way through and don’t punch again until the final note plays. My favorite songs are from people still working today: Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, John Prine, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. Not all of them are well known: I enjoyed all three opening acts at the recent Dylan concert in Augusta: Elana James, Jimmie Vaughan and especially Junior Brown. I also love songs from the formative HOUSTON DAILY JOURNAL and white Delta Festival poster, would you sell it to me?” Her terse “ho” cuts off the last three words of my sentence. And that was it, at least “temporarily,” I thought. Back, motoring with Rahdy and Foster, and with our guns arid hunt ing equipment, across the unbelievably rich, black soil deposited there by “Old Man River”. Passed fields of rice, cot ton and beans. By rusting farm machines! arid white, empty insecticide buckets and fertilizer sacks flapping in the high field-border grass. Down dusty, dirt roads outlined with cotton lint and by three-pickup mobile homes and tired, sub-standard schools. To fields teaming with morning doves so thick that all of our huhtets ‘limit out’ at every shoot. So much Hchness. So much poverty. So many heartaches. So much irony. And then, it’s back to Roy’s Store. Back for needed coffee and bohdiments for the night’s bird-supper. Ahd there she is. Pam. And so, with uncharacter istic trepidation, I try again. “I’d give you a hundred dollars for the poster”. “No,” is the quick response; ahd I real ize it would have been the same had my offer been a thousand dollars. But her tone is softer as she explains: “It’s a signed original, one of a kiiid, never printed”. And then she warms as she shows me what she believes to be an early Mickey Mouse doll and pbints out the ancient gas pump, in the comer, for which she rejected a “six thousand dollar offer”. I began to admire this tough little woman in this tough, conflicted coun try. And I think, too much has been taken from this rich/poor couhtry and too little has been given back. I’m not going to get “my Delta poster”. It’s going to stay on Roy’s Store’s dusty wall - where it belongs. Good for you, Pam. At Roy’s Store in Chatham, Miss. years of rock n’ roll. If, while driving, I hear the voice of Chuck Berry or Buddy Holly or Elvis Presley, I will keep fingers off the radio until the song ends. • If a local station ever plhyed any thing even older - from Wobdy Guthrie, Cisco Houston, Pete.Seeger or Odetta - I would stay on that station forever. (That has never happened; though.) My dangerous-driving finger gets a well-deserved rest if the radio plays The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Band. The same goes for The Byrds, Van Morrison, James Brown, Gariy Simon, Otis Redding, Led Zeppelin - my list never ends. I will never tune out Don McLean’s American Pie, no matter hbw many times I’ve heard it. (Madoiina’s ver sion, though, won’t get fat at all.) I will never shut off Thb Boys of Summer, by Don Henley. Mick Nelson’s Garden Party gets better every time I hear it. My music rarely plays oh local radio, though, so I spend more time listening to CDs than radio in my bar. Satellite radio sounds perfect to nie, so maybe someday I’ll take that plunge. Your tastes are no doubt totally dif ferent from mine, but are you being served? What kind of music does it take to retire your button-puriching finger while you’re driving down the road? Reach Glynn Moore at glynn. moore@augustachronicle.com.