"Its Sunday Morning in Our Quiet Little White-bred Redneck Mountain Town!

I park in front of my home. Something is different... floats through my mind. Granted, I had just pulled an illegal U-turn--twice--to read a sign at the end of the bridge that reads, and I quote:

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If you won't vote for Obama because he's black, then vote for the white half!

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I'll see if the sign is still there tomorrow and snap a picture. That something like that even needs put on a sign in my quiet little mountain town says something.

But this isn't why I was sitting in my car, engine off, staring at my yard.

My Obama sign.

It wasn't hanging on the black Shepherd's hook at the end of my sidewalk.

That's odd, I think as I step out of the car...

And step on my Obama sign. It's dirty. It's smeared with purple gunk. The two corners where it was hanging from the Shepherd's hook are torn.

Now I'm angry.

I turn and stare up the street, then turn around and stare down the street. McCain seems to have suffered no losses. Granted, I could be wrong--after all, there are so many, who is to say if one has gone missing? But the fact that I just passed an overtly-racist pro-Obama sign less than a mile from my home, I have to wonder if I was the victim of a knee-jerk reaction to someone who wanted to avoid being seen at the busiest intersection in town...

As I lean down and pick up my sign to carry it inside and clean it up, I do another scan of the neighborhood. Seeing no curtains being fluttered or other suspect persons ducking beind bushes, I step into my home to inventory the damage. Luckily, the plastic casing I had the sign in received the brunt. I managed to get most of the dirt, mud, and purple stuff off, removed the sign from the sleeve to inspect it--mostly just creases, nothing that makes it illegible--but the plastic is different story. Some of the purple gunk just won't come off.

Never mind, I think. I put the sign back into the sleeve, tape it shut, grab more twine, and head back out to my Shepherd's hook where I proudly reattach it. I am angry, but I will not succumb to the pressures of ill-motivated persons. If I come home tomorrow and it is once again on the ground, I will hang it back up. If it goes missing, I will go to Wal-Mart, buy some poster board, and make my own damn signs.

But I will not be silenced.

This is despicable. I don't care if it's bored teens with a hormonally charged sense of indignation at the town faggot voting for a nigger. I don't care if it's Grandma Moses thinking she's simply doing what Jesus would do (although the purple what I suspect is paint-balls gunk certainly doesn't point in their collective direction...)

Yes, I sacrificed some things when I moved out of the city--one of those things being tolerance, apparently, which I didn't think was the case. I realize people get emotionally charged over politics, the (mistaken) intertwining of their personal morals with those politics, but I certainly don't forgive or condone vandalism or censorship. I realize this was probably just one rogue individual, but I can't help but wonder how many of my McCain-supporting neighbors silently agree with the action taken on my front lawn today...

I can only wonder...

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The sun is shining and the grass is green,
Under the 3 feet of the snow I mean,
This is a day when its hard to wear a frown,
All the happy people stop to say hello!
Stranger: Get out of my way!,
Stan: Even though the temperature's low,
Its a perfect Sunday morning in my quiet little mountain town...

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