When I was 19 I drove across country from California with my girlfriend. Almost everything was beautiful until we got Oklahoma and then Texas. It just became, "at some point it'll change. It has to."

Then all of a sudden it got really green, there was a big high bridge over an estuary and there were egrets and waterways and...it was changing! I kid you not there was a 🌈. We were genuinely excited. Then like a snap of the finger suddenly it smelled like garbage.

We parked just to stretch our legs. I walked up what looked like a random berm and suddenly the gulf opened up before us. I didn't even know we were by the sea until that moment.

What spread out before us just then was something I've only seen in cinematic future apocalypse scenes.

Oil rigs spread out in the distance, refineries in the far distance to the southwest, and a bathtub ring of discoloration and dead fish at the high tide mark for the entire beach left and right.

Oh, and dudes in 4x4s on the beach driving over the fish, and some kids building sand castles.

James Cameron couldn't have outdone it.

It didn't get better until we got north of Florida.

I even had a night wheny car broke down overnight in Alabama. It must have been a swamp. It was 90 at night and I got THREE HUNDRED MOSQUITO BITES. I counted them.

I don't know why the south fought so hard, but I do know why they needed slaves.