2007 Soap Box Archives

Happy Birthday America

As we approach this, the 231st birthday of the United States of America I would like to say thank you and pay homage to the men and women who fought and died keeping America the greatest and freest nation on the planet.

I have been setting here trying to think of something fitting to write about the Fourth of July but one piece I wrote a few years ago keeps coming to mind and I don¹t know that I can do any better. So I would like to revisit America The Beautiful.

Happy Fourth America

AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL

Have you ever spent the later afternoon watching the purple shadows deepen in the Arizona desert or seen a herd of elk plow their way through waist deep snow on a cold Colorado dawn?

Did you ever watch the sun go down in Hawaii or see the stormy waves break over the rock bound coast of Maine or have you ever seen an eagle fly up out of the mists of Alaska or a big October moon hanging full over the still
Dakota badlands?

Have you ever tasted the gumbo in New Orleans, the barbecue in Carolina or the chicken wings in Buffalo? Have you ever had Brunswick stew in Macon or cornbread in Birmingham or brisket slow cooked over hill country mesquite wood?

Did you ever drink water from a gurgling branch in Utah or stand on the mountain above El Paso Del Norte and see the lights twinkling clear over into Mexico?

Did you ever jingle horses in the predawn stillness of a perfect Texas day and watch their shod hooves kicking up sparks on the volcanic rock or tended a trot line on a foggy Carolina morning or heard the distant song of a
lovesick whippoorwill in the pristine Tennessee late night?

Have you seen the faces on Mount Rushmore or stood at the Vietnam monument? Have you ever crossed the mighty Mississippi or been to the Daddy of OEm All in Cheyenne, Wyoming or seen the mighty Vols run out on the football field on a chilly autumn afternoon?

Did you ever see the Chicago skyline from Lakeshore Drive at night or the New England foliage in the fall or the summer beauty of the Shenandoah valley or Indiana covered with new snow?

Did you ever see a herd of wild horses running free across the empty spaces of Nevada or caught a walleyed pike out of a cold Wisconsin stream or marveled at the tall ships docked in the harbor at Baltimore?

Did you ever see the early morning dew sparkling on the bluegrass or the wind stir the wheat fields on a hot Kansas afternoon or drove the lonely stretches of old Route 66?

Have you ever heard the church bells peal their call to worship on a early Sunday in some small town in the deep South or passed through the redwood forests as the sun was going down?

Have you ever been to Boise or Baxley or Beaufort or Billings? Have you ever passed through Sanford or Suffolk or San Angelo? Have you seen the falls at Niagara, the ice palace in St. Paul or the gateway to the west?

This then is America, the land God blesses with everything and no Eiffel Tower, no Taj Mahal, no Alps, no Andes, no native hut, no royal palace can rival her awesome beauty, her diverse population, her monolithic majesty.
America the free, America the mighty, America the beautiful.


Pray for our troops

What do you think?

God Bless America

Charlie Daniels

July 2, 2007