Soap Box

In the last fifty years I have been blessed with the privilege of traveling all fifty of our states. I have played in almost every town of any size and been honored to meet and spend time with the people who live across the length and breadth of the place I consider to be the greatest nation the world has ever known.

There was a time - early in my career - when my travel was pretty well restricted to the major cities and middle sized towns where the nightclubs were and since the impressions we get of a place are shaped by the places we've been, we tend to judge of a whole general area by only the parts we've seen.

For instance, I played the Peppermint Lounge in New York City in the early 1960s, never realizing that a few miles to the north of the city there was a whole different world, rural areas with farms and small picturesque villages and mountains and small rivers and lakes, only a few miles, but a world away from the 24-hour hustle and bustle of the city.

The first time I went to upstate New York I described it as Tennessee with snow.

The people talked with a different accent and the weather was a lot colder but there was a down home feel about the area and the people and I found that we had a lot in common and, as my career grew and our tour stops started spreading out across the map I found that I had a lot in common with people in small towns and rural areas all over the country.

The part of our nation known as "fly over country" many times actually is flown over without the travelers ever realizing the beauty, the culture and the uniqueness of the hundreds of little worlds they are 30,000 feet above

You may have been to New Orleans, but if you've missed the Evangeline, French-speaking area of South Louisiana, you've missed so much of the true flavor of the area. You may have heard the Dixieland the Big Easy rightfully prides itself on, but you missed Jole Blon played by an authentic Cajun fiddle player and sung in the kind of French that's only spoken in that part of the world. You may have had the �touff�e but you missed the dirty rice and mudbugs.

You may have been to Dallas, but I'll bet you missed Alpine where the big bend of the Rio Grand River separates two nations and cowboys still round up the cattle every fall.

You may have been to San Francisco, but if you haven't visited the beautiful wine country of Sonoma and Napa Valley, you've missed one of the most unique and beautiful parts of the state

As you drive through the wine country, pulling off the road occasionally to visit a winery, life just seems to kinda slow down and take on an unhurried pace not usually identified with the crowded freeways and bee hive streets of California.

Oh and bye the way, if you're going to try to sample the wine, be sure and take along a designated driver because there are so many wineries that by the time you have a sip at even a handful of them you can be walking �loop legged.�

If you go to Alaska, don't just fly into Anchorage and Fairbanks and think you've seen the state.

Take a drive to Sterling or Soldotna or Palmer; don't leave Alaska without at least driving through some of the out backcountry where the countryside is still like it was two hundred years ago.

Folks, what I'm saying is that all across the country there are sights that will take your breath away that aren't mentioned on any tourist brochures, small towns, two lane country roads, lakes, rivers, and best of all the people, the people with different accents, who like different foods, with different cultures and preferences, but all with one thing in common.

They all love America and feel blessed to be a part of it.

Folks, make it a point to see America all of it.

What do you think?

Pray for our troops and the peace of Jerusalem

God Bless America

� Charlie Daniels

PLEASE READ BEFORE YOU POST

Feel free to comment on Charlie's soapboxes, but please refrain from profanity and "Anonymous" posts are not allowed, we need a name (it doesn't have to be your first and last name) and you MUST provide a valid email address. If you provide an email address, but leave the name as "Anonymous" we will pick a name for you based on your email address. No one other than website adminstrators will see your email address, not other posters. If you post without a valid email address, your comment (whether postive or negative) will be deleted. � TeamCDB