My Friends Send Me Things

[scene: Picnic in a Fayetteville park where a soldier is trying to knock up a Carolina Palin while her friend mouth-breathes in despair (or just because)]

The Friend: I'm bored.

[Hits trooper in the back with de-gristled chicken bone.]

Let's go.

Buck Smith, Official Town Official: Sad to say, in any other town, this soldier would be S.O.L. [Shit Out of Luck –editor biff]. Not in my town.

When a soldier needs help, the citizens of Fayetteville answer the call. No matter how fat and odious that call may be.

[Alarum! Alarum! Wingmen to your stations!]

The Ugly Friend: [Wingmen approach] (gasps) A hottie! A frogman! (loses breath) A cowpoke. Oh, goody!

Buck Smith, Official Town Official: Way to jump on that grenade, men. Now, that's sacrifice.

Then, again, that's what you'd expect from America's first sanctuary community for soldiers.

Soldier: Thanks, Fayetteville!

Fayettevillian who Will Give a Soldier a Hand Job in the Park on a Picnic Blanket like You Weren't Even Sitting Right There: (Smiles because her yrailer park lot is paid for through the month now.)

Buck Smith: My pleasure.


That's an example of series of ads commissioned and run by the Fayetteville Area Convention and Visitors Bureau to booster tourism through Support Our Troops sentimentalism. Although the spots tested well among the target demographic—horny GIs with more money than sense—they are not playing well among the city's blue bloods. Among that crowd, the Red Lobster-Twice-a-Week, old-money families, they are considered “tacky,” “tasteless,” and “moronic.”

These are the people who sat silently by through the campaigns of my youth:

Fayetteville: Oh, so That's How You Spell It
Fayetteville: “What You Looking At?”
Fayetteville: A Moment on the Lips, a Lifetime in Your Bloodstream
Fayetteville: City Motto: “He Needed Killin'”

Me? I couldn't be prouder of my hometown. Honestly, I welled up with tears when the city official said, “S.O.L.” Sniff, there I go again.

I'm so homesick now. I think I'll go call my mother. Be right back.