Today, I’m channeling my inner Lewis Grizzard. An article in The New Yorker magazine prompted me to do so.

“Lewis do y’all get The New Yorker magazine ‘up there.’ I assume you made it ‘up there.’ If all of your readers got to vote, I’m sure you did, but, of course, we didn’t get to vote on that.”

“Lewis,” says I, “We sure do miss you. There is so much going on now, you’d be having a heyday. I don’t know who you would have voted for in 2016, but this president and his opponents would be a goldmine for you.”

“I asked you if y’all get The New Yorker up there. Now don’t go thinking that this self-respecting southern man actually reads that magazine. I don’t, but I saw a reference to an article the other day that caught my fancy and looked it up online.”

“The article was about one of our southern stalwarts of the fast food industry, Chick-Fil-A. It seems that Mr. Cathy’s restaurant is making some inroads in the city of New York. And guess what? Those Yankees are taking quite a liking to our chikin. I’m not misspelling chicken ignorantly, but some advertising guy had some cows carrying signs that read, ‘Eat More Chikin.’” Very popular!

“Anyway, Lewis, this article in The New Yorker was written by a ‘hoity-toity’ writer by the name of Dan Piepenbring. If you read Mr. Piepenbring’s article, you would have invited him to the Okefenokee and left him right in the middle of it.”

“Mr. Piepenbring does not like Chick-Fil-A, Lewis. He said even the air smelled fried! I didn’t see a picture of him, but I wonder if his pointed nose was turned up when he walked in. I wonder what he would think of some of our first class catfish restaurants. By the way, do y’all get hungry up there?”

“Of course Mr. Piepenbring had to mention Chick-Fil-A’s Christian orientation. He didn’t like that and please tell the Lord that the restaurant’s corporate purpose “to glorify God” was mentioned in an off-handed way. He compared the ambience to that of a megachurch and described Chick-Fil-A’s entrance into the New York City scene as ‘infiltration.’”

“I might call Mr. Piepenbring’s writing a little elitist, certainly not like yours. He uses words like ersatz and claustral. I don’t recall reading those words in ‘Don’t Bend Over in the Garden, Granny, You Know Them Taters Got Eyes.’ I guess I could look up ersatz or claustral in the dictionary, but I wouldn’t want Mr. Piepenbring to know I didn’t know what he was writing about.”

“He already has a low enough opinion of us southerners. He makes fun of us not knowing how to spell chikin and says that the use of cows in advertising chicken sandwiches is weird. But here’s one thing he doesn’t understand, Lewis. It doesn’t matter where you live, those Chick-Fil-A sandwiches taste mighty good. One of those Manhattan restaurants that he makes fun of sells a chicken sandwich every six seconds. I guess Mr. Evangelist Cathy is laughing all the way to the bank!”

“So tell me, Lewis, how’s it going up there? Do you miss us as much as we miss you? Did you get to see your beloved Dawgs and their recent season? By the way, say hello to Larry for me. I guess he’s doing the play by play of all those who come through the Pearly Gates.”

“And don’t worry about me reading The New Yorker too much. As long as they have writers like Mr. Piepenbring, I’d rather re-read ‘Southern by the Grace of God.’”