Monday, September 15, 2008

Virgin Mary or Hooded KKK guy?

A couple of weekends ago we spent some time on a River in a small town in Central Florida. One of the days was spent on a boat, with a captain and tour guide. He was a very nice man, very courteous and happy to tell us all sorts of stuff regarding the river, the area and it's history. As the day wore on I kept looking at a medallion he was wearing around his chest. I kept thinking it was of some virgin. That seemed very strange to me. This was a southern, white man, and in my mind it was hard to reconcile that he was Catholic. Now if there is one word that sums me up it's Curious, some might say nosey. I couldn't let it go. As I got a better look at the medallion, I almost tripped over and fell over board! It was in the background, the confederate flag (very common to see in Florida) in the middle a hooded clansman (which sorta looked like a virgin) and in the fore front a burning cross. As soon as I could I told my husband in Spanish, of course, he didn't believe me. He got a good look and confirmed it. Over the weekend we saw kids with swastika tattoos, dragon master tattoos, the "south shall rise again" stickers and a plethora of Southern Flags. What was disconcerting was that everyone was more than nice to us, even my husband and step son with their thick accents didn't seem to raise any eyebrows. My husband kept on admonishing me for speaking Spanish, he was sure we would wake up to a burning cross on the lawn of the house we had rented. Ha-ha! Like our speaking Spanish was going to give us away? Not his thick accent in English....anyway, I am sure our bringing our dogie who is an American Bulldog confused them into thinking we were one of them!

2 comments:

I love you Darling, really! Thank you!