Virginia Ham

First, let me ask - why is it that whenever a reporter from either the East Coast or the Left Coast writes something about people in the South, they are compelled to include details like this for "color?"

The cocktail peanut, a staple crop, is hailed with an annual festival. Some local ladies still start their sentences with, "I declare …" So many Emporians turned out for hot dogs and lemonade at Circuit Court Clerk Bobby Wrenn's annual Fourth of July party, they clogged up the sewer.

Well, I suppose in an artile about how eatin' bad and smokin' heavy will bring you to an early grave, we need to know that the folks of Emporia, VA have got hard, firmly packed stools, enough to make a septic tank cry uncle.  Bobby musta been cooking them cheap weenies from Piggly Wiggly . . .

You can read the article but yes, these folks are aware that their traditional life style may be killing them, but it is their choice.  I don't think it is the diet per se that is killing them - instead . . .

Small farms and factories vanished, pushing unemployment to double digits well before the rest of the country crashed. The tobacco fields that were once the South's economic base are mostly gone, but not the habit . . .

Gone are the 12-hour workdays of a farmer.  Which kept the weight down for a lot of folks.

I do declare.