Different Perspectives of Benton
Perspective One of Six: This town has Changed
Characters point of View: Old Man Smith
This town has changed since my boyhood. It's different, it's grown in population, and modern convenience, but it's changed. The old guard that kept law and order in this down have vanished. As I drive down the old brick paved main street. I noticed many of the old buildings have changed hands. The old barber shop where my dad took me to get my once a week haircut is gone. In its place is some new business called “Pandora's Family Salon” . Its owner Pandora Whitethorn is a thorn in my side, so is her “Daughter” If you can call her that.

Even among the old families the ones that held carve out this town from the banks of the Big Black River there is change. The Potter Family, well they have always been a strange bunch, they are the main driving force behind that. And the new Episcopal priest in town? Rev. Percy Bell, he is a real nut job. Who would have thought our local Episcopal parish would have gone as my favorite television news channel says would have gone “Woke”.

It seems a trend in Benton. All this “Woke” shit is going to be the end of this town. I remember when the Klan ruled this town and we were better for it. People would go to bed with their doors unlocked and sleep with their windows open. Men looked and acted like men and women looked and acted like women. Businesses were closed on Sunday so everybody could go to church and worship God, the Pledge of Allegiance was said each morning before the start of class. And Prayer and the Bible were the center part of our education. And teachers were allowed to whoop your ass with a paddle if you stepped out of line.

Those were the days that I miss. The days of my boyhood, back when Benton, was a small southern town, with good, wholesome southern values. Before all this “Woke” shit became common. Back then you had two schools, one for the white students and one of the black students. And everybody got along. Now you have one school and white and blacks go to school together.

Even in Benton Academy, a school that was started to keep the white students from mingling with the black students you have signs of this “Woke” bullshit is eating away at the very fabric of the school. Two of it's students are fucking pussies. I guess the correct term would “Transgender” But I think there just fucking pussies that are two afraid to be men so they gotta hide in a skirt. One of them happens to be a Potter. The other is Pandora's “Daughter”.
That's another problem. This town seems to getting over ran with fucking transgender people. Sure there are less than one percent of the total population. But there are four, maybe five here. Out of twenty five hundred people that is not a lot. But that's how weeds start. Let me give you an example, you see a weed in your garden or flower bed, and you shrug it off cause it's just one. You come back tomorrow morning there are now two, still you shrug it off cause it's just two of them. You come back tomorrow then there three. Now would have been a good time to do what you should have done on day one, that is pick up that hoe and remove those bastards. Throw them in the trash pile so you can burn them later.
Instead you shrug your shoulders and go back to work, next morning there are now four, and then it's five and soon your whole damn garden or flowerbed is overrun with weeds and now you gotta trash the whole garden or flower bed to start all over again. It's happened before. God did it with the great flood that killed off most of mankind. Man had just become too wicked.
The same thing happened  to those twin cities. Sodom and Gomorrah they just grew too wicked so God  had to remove them by sending down cleansing fire from the heavens and burning them to the ground. God will do the same to Benton one day. But in one of those cities. He said an angel down to warn the only decent man living in that city of sin and vice. I just hope that before the almighty hand of God comes down on this town that God, in all his mercy will send out an angel to warn us of his pending judgment.  So we might have a chance to redeem ourselves or like what happened to Lot and his family to make preparations for our escape. But I’m sure some of us, just like Lot’s wife, will look back on this burning town and be turned to pillars of Salt for being foolish and looking back and ruined rubble of this town. 

Why do I believe this? Because Brother Abe down at West Street Baptist Church says so. And it's in the Bible and I believe every word that is written in that book. Just as I firmly believe that Brother Abe is the appointed one to usher the few chosen of Benton into the promised land. Brother Abe is not like the other preachers in down, no sir. He is one of the few remaining men of God that have a backbone to stand up to the rising tide. Brother Abe was right, we should have run them transfolks and the folks that stand behind them out of town the minute they arrived.

I only hope God lets me live long enough to see that day. Brother Abe says one day we will gather up enough support to take back this down and all them transfolks and all them LGTQ+ folks will be tarred and feathered and run out of town and business that supported them would be closed! And that we'll burn St. Mary's Episcopal church to the ground and piss and shit on the ashes because that were all this mess started!

And so while I sit on my front porch, sipping a little sour mash, watching my old hound dog scratch away at the few fleas that are tagging him. I smile, I smile mostly to myself because nobody comes to visit.  Well I don’t get many visitors not since I put up that electric fence that snaps and crackles as one thousand live jolts of lighting surge through it on this fine, autumn evening. I hope one day one of the neighborhood kids would crash into it and get the shock of his life or better yet one of them young good ol' boys would push one of them tranny kids into it and shock them back to their senses or kill them graveyard dead.

Anyway as I sit here, rocking back and forth, listening to the radio. I smile, I smile because one day it will be okay to hunt them folks down and shoot them down. That right to shoot them down like you do a coyote or run them up a tree and shoot them down like you do a squirrel. I know that Donald Trump will get back in office.

I know once more us Good ol' boys who wear M.A.G.A that stands for Make America Great Again hats and wave the Confederate battle will storm Washington DC again and then time we will hold it and lynch all the crooked snakes. I know this because Brother Abe told me so, and there are two things I believe in this world. I believe every word that is written in that good book we call the Bible and I believe in every word that Brother Abe preaches every Sunday and Wednesday.