The politicians are in full season spending money, making decisions, and running up the deficit. Good times if you are a politician though it pretty much sucks for the majority of the rest of us.
So I would like to share all time my favorite political decision that has ever been made. Of course it was on Tybee Island where I live though this is exactly the type of decision that many politicians make almost everywhere. In fact, if you have one that is just as good, please share it.
When I first moved to Tybee the island was even more laid back than it is now. In fact in those days, most everything about Tybee seemed stoned. Come to think of it, perhaps that is how this decision was made. I’ll have to toke on that for a while and will get back to you.
The Mayor back then was Pat Locklear, a really good guy. He is conservative and a tremendous supporter of the military as is everyone who is elected in Georgia. I think that there are court marshal laws if a politician is elected in the state that does not support the military. But I digress.
The local military bases were looking for a place to train soldiers on how to invade a tropical island. In those days most of our enemies were in Central American countries so it seemed like good planning from a military perspective. Ever the patriot, our Mayor agreed to have Tybee invaded.
In and of itself, this is not particularly a bad idea. It helps the military, provides training for soldiers to protect the nation, and probably contributed to the local economy. The only problem was the Mayor forgot to tell anybody. Perhaps he told his wife though that has never been confirmed and everyone may have been stoned at the time. Who knows?
It is a beautiful day and I am laying on the beach working on my tan. The first clue that we had that something was going on was the sun suddenly was blacked out by the several hundred military helicopters that were in the sky. Now we are used to seeing military helicopters fly over the ocean but never had this many been in formation at the same time.
Then the beach started to rumble so much that I had to grab my beer to keep it from spilling, which is one of the seven deadly sins on Tybee (unlike the rest of the Country Tybee came up with its own list of deadly sins one night during a Beach Bum softball game…but that’s another story).
Looking up there was a squadron of soldiers dressed in full military war dress, carrying rifles, running to where I sat mostly naked in my beach chair. My first thought that I was impressed by what they thought of me to send that many to take me down but then they ran by, jumped over and one of those guys grabbed my beer and took it with him! (It could have been a woman, I really don’t know. I was just staring at their guns!)
That was pretty much my experience though other island residents had it far rougher. Former politician Mallory, before he was a politician, found his house surrounded by guys wearing masks and lighting flame throwers. They had repelled down from the aforementioned helicopters on the Tybee School and several missed their mark and landed in Mallory’s yard. Of course he runs screaming into the street for them to stop so they took him prisoner.
Johnny O can confirm all of this.
They also invaded the famous Sunday night talent show at the old Desoto Beach Club where several hundred would show up to either entertain or be entertained. Of course no one had ever repelled into the talent show before, though many had fallen down, so a group of soldiers with guns won that night.
The following day I was driving home from work and someone had taken the time to make a new sign welcoming visitors to the island. The old one used to say, “Welcome to Tybee Island.”
This one said “Welcome to Camp Locklear!”
You gotta love the elected people of this land!
