Hit By A Truck...Call Chuck: Dispatches From A God-Less Nation

Along segments of Texas' Interstate 10, just outside of Houston, colossal billboards litter the roadside every few hundred yards. It's remarkable. The messages that they broadcast are from ambulance chasers: "Car wreck?" "What's your injury case worth?" "Car wreck... have you seeing double?" "Your lawyer for life." "Injured?" "Car wreck? We push...you win!" "Law Guns." "The firm you know... the firm you trust...." 

Vaguely competing, across the triple lane interstate, are messages from someone masquerading as someone "in the know": "Do not sin." "Where are you going.... Heaven or hell?" "It's NOT too late." "Who is Jesus? Call (83) FOR-TRUTH."  

Those billboards give me pause. Something about their " neighborly" existence gnaws at me; bothers me. I ask myself: How are they related? I consider this question for days.

Obviously, many thousands and thousands of dollars have been invested in capturing their designated audience--- an audience that includes the poor, disenfranchised and the needy. If I were to guess, both appear to be penned by predators of some sort. All the signs feel like they're speaking directly to the desperate. Seeing the two, as they are presented across from each other, magnifies their opportunistic qualities.

As I stare at the messages from these Southern billboards, scrawled on the back of two Chick-fil-A napkins, I hear the whisper of these lines in my mind: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free...."  I, honestly, can't recall the author;  so I 'Google' the words. And then, without hesitation, I apologize to Mr. Irving Berlin for becoming a country he would no longer feel inspired enough to write a song about.