While working a construction job in Montgomery, I had the opportunity to know the city. I was warned by many to stay away from Montgomery, that it was overly vibrant, but compared to Washington D.C. and Baltimore, it was tolerable. Here are nine things I learned…

1. It makes demographic sense

You have white people who speak English and you have black people who speak English. All identify as Americans. In a nominal sense, all worship the same Christian God. The whites behave in a mostly uniform way and the blacks behave in a mostly uniform way. Whites have their own areas and blacks have their own areas. I quickly learned how to deal with both groups and didn’t have any problems with either, even though some black areas of the city were rough.

In Washington D.C., there is no demographic logic. The gates to the city have long since been opened to the world so the result is an environment built on the template of an international airport. Once you walk out your front door, you are surrounded by all the world’s religions and odors. You cannot guess which second or third language that you learned long ago will aid you on your tasks for the day. In Montgomery, there were practically no surprises, resulting in far less personal tension and confusion.

2. Southern Baptists have stronger faith than other Protestant denominations

It’s easy for a Catholic or Orthodox Christian to needle Protestants, but I can’t say much bad about the Southern Baptists I met in Montgomery. Their faith was significantly stronger than other Protestants I’ve encountered, especially compared to the Northeast. Many men shared Biblical views to me which would have made them zealous converts to the Orthodox Church.

The principal flaw I saw in their faith is their lack of spiritual tools to block out worldly addictions and demonic deception. They are also undergoing subversion from within, so if I return to Montgomery in a decade, I would expect to find weaker faith and an increased tolerance of sodomy.

3. Southern hospitality is real

Let me first tell you about Middle Eastern hospitality. If you arrive at my Armenian mother’s house unexpectedly, she will stop all she’s doing to serve you. She will use her creative genius to make a meal from random ingredients in her pantry and find varieties of tea I didn’t even know she had. She will sit you down, ensure you are comfortable, and anticipate your needs. She will give you what you didn’t know you wanted. When your water glass is half empty, she will fill it even though you don’t want more water. I advise you to visit her on an empty stomach because she will ply you with food.

Then there is my Iranian father and stepmom. In their house, your genuine exclamation of being “full” will be totally ignored as waves of food are brought out. Once you finish a piece of cake—and you must eat it or else you will get into an argument with the host—you will think the gluttonous ordeal is over, but here comes a basket of grapes, apples, oranges, and other fruits you didn’t know were in season. And there may be some imported confections after that, and how bought some nuts and pistachios? You’re expected to eat most of it, because you don’t want to insult the host, do you? I am my father’s son yet not a meal goes by where I’m not urged to eat double my bodily requirement.

The hospitality of a typical American is more of a self-serve buffet model, to put it as kindly as I can. You will often not be offered anything, not even a glass of water, but if you want to get it yourself, the host will instruct you how to do so. A question I’ve often had to ask in the homes of my American friends is “I’m so very thirsty—can I please have a glass of water?” and then when I’m granted permission, I must ask, “Where are the glasses?” You can visit my mother’s house for years, but you will never know the location of the glasses, and she will reprimand you if you dare pick up your own dishes and carry them to the sink. Of course I am grateful for even the glass of water that I have to retrieve, but there is quite an irreconcilable gulf between American and Middle Eastern hospitality.

Enter Southern hospitality. They are the middle ground between these two extremes. They offer you food but are not overbearing. They go out of their way to serve you but do not force it. They are not put off by unexpected guests and are generous with their food even if they don’t have much. Their hospitality was pleasant and graceful, and closer to what I have experienced for most of my life.

4. They love junk food

I was astonished not only by the sheer number of fast food restaurants in Montgomery but the fact that they were always busy, including brands that you thought died long ago, like Hardees. The population is so satisfied by fast food that there are practically no restaurants that aren’t a chain brand. Perhaps two or three restaurants in the entire city have what I would define as a craft burger that is not cooked from frozen meat. The food culture is rather abysmal, and it is here that I stepped up my own cooking.

5. The black population is very high

There are a lot of blacks in Montgomery, enough to scare off any white liberal, but for me it was not a shock. I’m used to such enrichment (my high school was nearly 50% black), so Montgomery was almost a home away from home.

I was told there were tensions between whites and blacks in the city, but compared to where? I didn’t see this tension because the blacks in Montgomery don’t have a chip on their shoulder like the east coast blacks who analyze every infinitesimal action from a white as some type of racial offense or personal affront. I found the races in Montgomery to exist in a peaceful détente, perhaps because so many whites are armed. The most negative experience I had with a black was when a female Walmart greeter was aggressive in asking me to put on a face mask (I did not comply).

6. A lot of men served in the military

Most people you meet have either served in the military or know a direct relative who has. A lot of families have had multiple generations in military service, and only lately have many of the enlisted come to realize that the military is not what it once was.

7. Everyone you talk to identifies as a Christian

When talking to people in DC, I don’t drop God in a conversation because chances are they are secular or atheist. In Montgomery, people would drop God on me first, usually very early on, and from that I must conclude that I didn’t meet a single atheist while I was there. I could talk about “God’s plan” and they wouldn’t bat an eye. I could drop a verse from the Gospel and they would know it. Maybe the person I was talking to wasn’t devout, but almost everyone in Montgomery believed in God and had a basic understanding of the Bible. There was no need to filter your faith.

8. There is less disparity between the rich and poor

I did not see any obscene displays of wealth in Montgomery. While there is a large underclass, from my view it seemed that most of the inhabitants were in the middle-class category, tenuously getting by. The most common type of vehicle was a pickup truck, usually old and beat up, and rarely did I see a BMW or Mercedes-Benz.

Even in the rich areas of Montgomery, which I often worked in, the owners did not display a level of snobbiness that I would’ve expected. Most people are down to earth and have not made a false god out of money as I’ve seen on the east coast.

9. The driving is aggressive

The number one downside is insanely aggressive driving, usually by minorities. I have never been tailgated so often by impatient drivers. I guess everyone is in a rush to get to Hardees before it closes.

Conclusion

If you’ve never lived in a very black city, I don’t think you’d feel comfortable in Montgomery, but since I grew up around blacks as a kid (and survived to tell the tale), I didn’t have to make any adjustments besides cooking more often due to a lack of decent food options. When you account for all the pros and cons, moving to Montgomery from the DC suburbs was more a lateral move for me than anything. The fact that I can live in Montgomery without being annoyed or robbed frequently tells me that there probably aren’t many places in the United States that I couldn’t adapt to.

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3. Southern hospitality is real​

Let me first tell you about Middle Eastern hospitality. If you arrive at my Armenian mother’s house unexpectedly, she will stop all she’s doing to serve you. She will use her creative genius to make a meal from random ingredients in her pantry and find varieties of tea I didn’t even know she had. She will sit you down, ensure you are comfortable, and anticipate your needs. She will give you what you didn’t know you wanted. When your water glass is half empty, she will fill it even though you don’t want more water. I advise you to visit her on an empty stomach because she will ply you with food.

Then there is my Iranian father and stepmom. In their house, your genuine exclamation of being “full” will be totally ignored as waves of food are brought out. Once you finish a piece of cake—and you must eat it or else you will get into an argument with the host—you will think the gluttonous ordeal is over, but here comes a basket of grapes, apples, oranges, and other fruits you didn’t know were in season. And there may be some imported confections after that, and how bought some nuts and pistachios? You’re expected to eat most of it, because you don’t want to insult the host, do you? I am my father’s son yet not a meal goes by where I’m not urged to eat double my bodily requirement.

The hospitality of a typical American is more of a self-serve buffet model, to put it as kindly as I can. You will often not be offered anything, not even a glass of water, but if you want to get it yourself, the host will instruct you how to do so. A question I’ve often had to ask in the homes of my American friends is “I’m so very thirsty—can I please have a glass of water?” and then when I’m granted permission, I must ask, “Where are the glasses?” You can visit my mother’s house for years, but you will never know the location of the glasses, and she will reprimand you if you dare pick up your own dishes and carry them to the sink. Of course I am grateful for even the glass of water that I have to retrieve, but there is quite an irreconcilable gulf between American and Middle Eastern hospitality.

Enter Southern hospitality. They are the middle ground between these two extremes. They offer you food but are not overbearing. They go out of their way to serve you but do not force it. They are not put off by unexpected guests and are generous with their food even if they don’t have much. Their hospitality was pleasant and graceful, and closer to what I have experienced for most of my life.

As someone with a Pakistani mother, I completely identify with this. My mother's family is exactly what you describe in the first 2 paragraphs of Point #3.

Reflecting back on my years of dating typical i.e. unbelieving American women, it's not hard to see why none of them ever came close to matching my expectations, and why the only place I feel at home is when I'm alone, or with members of my mother's family. I am able to provide much better "hospitality" for myself, without having to fight the resentment when a standard American woman utterly fails to do so. Most if not all of the problems in my life can be traced to the terrible decision to pursue standard American women, encouraged by massive quantities of satanic hippie music from the sexual "liberation" (i.e. slavery to sin) era that I bathed in as a teen.

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Roosh, I hope you paid a visit to Heidi, Mark, and the gang at the (((SPLC))). I'm sure it would be nothing but good vibes and southern hospitality.. :alien:

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Try British hospitality. It's almost like the American "self service" model, but with added awkwardness, and an underlying feeling that they'll be glad when you've left.

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Disclaimer: have not neen to Montgomery, Alabama.
I am glad that you have your new home (even if temporarily)there.
However, how does point no1 ("demographically makes sense")make sense to you?
So, from your account it seems in Montgomery you are either "White American " or "Black American" end the two groups segregate from one another. How does this make your life any easier (you are a child of first-generation immigrants with non-English sounding name). No , am not trying to troll, I am just curious.
I think the ideal demographic of an ideal US city would be like LA circa 2010 (Yes, visited LA that year.)
about 47 % Hispanic Latino (preferably Mexican or other Central American and not Cuban or Puerto Rican) , cca 30% White American, 6-8% Black American and the remainder is everyone else (Korean, Cambodia, Iranian etc)
Yes, I speak Spanish so I wouldn't mind the presence of Latino folks from Central America. The Korean dentist, the Cambodian shopkeeper, the Iranian dry-cleaner owner, the Ethiopian waiter and the Mexican painter do not bother me, even if English is only their second language. Overall, first generation immigrants (ON AVERAGE) tend to be some of the most genuine people (your parents included)
Surely most Black immigrants from African and the Caribbean (except Jamaica) are mostly pleasant to be around and are usually a net win for the US? Can you say the same about most Black Americans in Montgomery? Just a random thought.
Plus , I am surprised you did not mention the violent crime rates in Montgomery (much higher than in Washington DC) plus the sky-high obesity rates in Alabama,as a whole?

Again, I am not trying to spoil it for you, I am glad you found your home there.

PS Found most people in LA mostly polite. Sadly did not have such good experience in the cities in the American South I visited (Orlando, FL, Memphis TN...surprisingly Atlanta , GA, was in the "alright" category).

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Since I married a nice Southern gal, I can attest to Southern hospitality. The worst thing is to put out a plate of something with a stingy amount and have people feel like they can't have as much as they want, that they should have just a little bit so others can also have their little bit. No, there must be a cornucopia of everything where everyone can stuff themselves as much as they want to. Her sharpest criticisms ("bless her heart") are when someone is stingy on the provided food.

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Thank you for being both candid and kinder than I see many Orthodox/Catholics when speaking of we Protestants.

You may disagree with me here, but I think the church as a whole is certainly being attacked with internal subversion on all fronts, as I am wholly certain that there are faithful among all three "branches" of it. We Protestants are dealing with the dilution and commodification of the Gospel, turning the faith into "fast food Jesus." Catholics are reeling from a pope whose on-the-record views seem outright heretical to me. And I recall hearing the Orthodox church is currently embattled with an internal political schism. Not only is the body divided, but it's own subsections are being chipped away at.

Roosh, if you've the time, could you expand on what the spiritual tools you reference we Protestants lack are? I'm a bit flummoxed over what you may mean beyond the Bible, prayer, being in attendance at your parish (including the ordinances of baptism by immersion and communion, sermons, small group studies, and mentorship by a church elder), and a prayer book and hymnal.

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Thank you for being both candid and kinder than I see many Orthodox/Catholics when speaking of we Protestants.

You may disagree with me here, but I think the church as a whole is certainly being attacked with internal subversion on all fronts, as I am wholly certain that there are faithful among all three "branches" of it. We Protestants are dealing with the dilution and commodification of the Gospel, turning the faith into "fast food Jesus." Catholics are reeling from a pope whose on-the-record views seem outright heretical to me. And I recall hearing the Orthodox church is currently embattled with an internal political schism. Not only is the body divided, but it's own subsections are being chipped away at.

Roosh, if you've the time, could you expand on what the spiritual tools you reference we Protestants lack are? I'm a bit flummoxed over what you may mean beyond the Bible, prayer, being in attendance at your parish (including the ordinances of baptism by immersion and communion, sermons, small group studies, and mentorship by a church elder), and a prayer book and hymnal.

A good Southern Baptist would immediately tell you that "we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places", and that in order to handle this, we must "Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.".

I will admit, shamefully, that I didn't remember that both of these are from the same passage, and my second quote is the verse immediately before my first quote, but I know them from Southern Baptist Sunday School, and I can tell you that most Southern Baptists can immediately quote these verses, and give you some kind of testimony in which they have lived this out.

Most Baptist children have participated in a skit at some time where they have made armor and a sword out of cardboard and aluminum foil, and wear the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, and wield the sword of the spirit.

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There's a lot of great history in Montgomery. One of the last vestiges of southern hospitality (it still exists in places like Savannah Georgia and Columbus, Mississippi among others). I love the beautiful language the southern gentlemen once used. It is said that the old southern accent is closest to true English (moreso than the gobbledegook the Brits speak today). This sign can still be seen in downtown Montgomery (assuming it hasn't been cancelled yet).

War is hell, and it is a tragedy that the Confederacy was attacked by Lincoln, who killed more Americans than even the dastardly coronavirus, but what a beautiful way to start a rebellion.

Contrast this to any narration from the last 50 years, particularly the mideast wars, which is mostly F bombs and uncultered men yelling gleefully in utter confusion about their purpose or motives.

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Roosh, I hope you paid a visit to Heidi, Mark, and the gang at the (((SPLC))). I'm sure it would be nothing but good vibes and southern hospitality.. :alien:

Looking at the reactions, someone either didn't get the humor in my post... or is OK with the SPLC. o_O

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Regional hospitality is always interesting. I learned not to compliment items in local's homes when I was overseas.

Me: "Nice vase."

Local friend: "Here, you take. You take."

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In a nominal sense, all worship the same Christian God.

It’s easy for a Catholic or Orthodox Christian to needle Protestants, but I can’t say much bad about the Southern Baptists I met in Montgomery.

Do the Orthodox consider non-Orthodox as Christians who are worthy of salvation in God’s eyes or is that reserved strictly for the Orthodox? Are non-Orthodox considered heretics who have polluted the faith and are worthy of condemnation and ultimately damnation?

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Do the Orthodox consider non-Orthodox as Christians who are worthy of salvation in God’s eyes or is that reserved strictly for the Orthodox? Are non-Orthodox considered heretics who have polluted the faith and are worthy of condemnation and ultimately damnation?

I am not E. Orthodox, but my immediate thought upon reading this is that none of us are worthy of salvation in God’s eyes — we are all of us worthy of condemnation and ultimate damnation. And that Christ Jesus founded one true Church to lead all men to eternal salvation.

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Do the Orthodox consider non-Orthodox as Christians who are worthy of salvation in God’s eyes or is that reserved strictly for the Orthodox? Are non-Orthodox considered heretics who have polluted the faith and are worthy of condemnation and ultimately damnation?

We consider them heterodox Christians who lack the fullness of the Truth. We don't make proclamations to their salvation and never have. That's not our job. We do not think being Orthodox is absolutely required (i.e. Unam Sanctam) to be saved, but I would advise Orthodoxy to someone looking to maximize their chances.

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I am not E. Orthodox, but my immediate thought upon reading this is that none of us are worthy of salvation in God’s eyes — we are all of us worthy of condemnation and ultimate damnation. And that Christ Jesus founded one true Church to lead all men to eternal salvation.

This is a given. The gist of my question was, is Orthodoxy the only path by which that may be achieved? Do the members of that church view themselves as being THE straight and narrow?

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I actually grew up in Baltimore prior to the city becoming almost totally black and perpetually violent. I now live in Pennsylvania, and although there are blacks around me up here, they are not like the sorts of blacks I remember from Baltimore. They want to be here, whereas the blacks of Baltimore were forever contemptuous of being in a city and nation founded by whites.

And I understand both sides of the issue. I’m not saying the Baltimore blacks are justified in their behavior—they’re not—but by the same token, “they’re that way just because they’re black” isn’t entirely truthful. There was an external impetus that inclined them in such direction.

After the Civil War the Confederate sympathizers in Maryland were at a loss. Those who owned farmlands were suddenly without slaves to tend them. However, the nation was now transforming to an industrial economy, and any southerner who could and did invest in steam-driven machinery or the factories/shops that included such devices could get rich.

And so in late 19th century Baltimore you saw these former Confederate sympathizers who sold their farmlands and were now getting into industry in a big way. And in some regards it was more economical for them, as they could pay people slave wages (freed blacks and poor whites alike) without having to worry about caring for “old slaves” who were no longer fit for work, or who were otherwise injured beyond their capacity for labor.

[My own relatives were very much poor whites—they were coal miners (originally from Pennsylvania).]

And so, in a sense, in the Mid-Atlantic the slave system never ended, just as America borrowing from the British caste system never really ended. And a lot of resentment grew amongst blacks and the laboring classes against this “class framework”.

Farther down south there may have actually been a degree of “noblesse oblige” practiced among property owners. But no, that absolutely wasn’t widespread in Baltimore. Far more the exception to the rule.

Then there's the question of whether this was the Jews exacerbating the differences between “labor” and “capital” in order to sublimate their own unassailable differences with the Christian majority, or whether it was the greed of the Mid-Atlantic Christian gentry themselves.

I’d say it was a mixture of both. Human greed is what it is (a cardinal vice that leads directly to mortal sin). At the same time, there were Jews in Baltimore who very much wanted to attack Christianity, and “black issues” and “labor issues” were ways of making it seem Christianity had failed.

And so what you had were the Jews creating their “Ethical Societies”, or “Ethical Culture Movement”, which was basically an effort to make American ecumenical Christianity seem worse than useless in handling 20th century challenges. And to spearhead this they found a gentile front-woman—Madelyn Murray O’Hair—who in 1960 was living and working in Baltimore as a psychiatric social worker.

O’Hair was very bitter at the adulterous father of her first child refusing to divorce his wife, staying married on Christian grounds. She then became an outspoken atheist pushing Soviet communism as a panacea. And so she would serve as a sort of gentile “magnet” to attract attention away from the Jewish Ethical Society as they got Christian prayer and any/all sort of Bible reading banned from American public schools.

O’Hair didn’t stay in Baltimore after winning her 1963 SCOTUS case against school Bible-reading, as her house was then constantly pelted with rocks. Instead, she moved to Hawaii and married a Marine who was stationed there (who was actually an FBI informant). She also founded American Atheists, gradually growing rich on donations.

And by then Baltimore had a lot of collective bargaining, mostly through the Teamsters at the Port of Baltimore, and so the local Jewish drive to push communism began to wane. The result is the Jews switched to encouraging their Critical Race Theory (which at the time was understood as “black revolutionary nationalism”).

This coincided with the baby boom generation’s love of recreational drug use. The result is that in the early 1970’s the Port of Baltimore became a major ingress for heroin and cocaine to enter the country, with the sale of these drugs creating a permanent illicit economy that supported Baltimore’s black community.

The result of these 2 things—CRT and a gang-controlled narcotics economy—made it so Baltimore’s blacks became impossible for anyone else to live around. And so throughout the 80’s and 90’s you saw a giant white exodus up to Bel-Air and other parts of Harford County.

With the millennium you saw Baltimore’s black community implode into its own violence, narcissism, and outright stupidity. CRT had taught the blacks that all their bad behaviors could be blamed on “white racism”, with drug gangs now running their own communities through “street justice”.

In fact, if you look at a map, you can see where I-95 cuts through the southeast tip of Baltimore. That tip is where you see the Dundalk Marine Terminal and the Curtis Bay Terminal—the Port of Baltimore. It’s the only part of the city that’s still worth anything. Everything in the city to the north and west of that is just a more moneyed version of what you see in Liberia. It’s held together by Jewish finance capital, but that’s about all that’s holding it together.

With all that said, I’d be remiss if I didn’t add the one markedly noble thing about my home town—a thing it has since forfeit along with all its other boons—and that was its 19th century focus on “curing mental illness”, so much as to lead to the founding of the Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital in 1853, mostly under the same Quaker principles that led to the creation of the modern penitentiary, rather than what had been a choice between brutal flagellations and hangings (with the choice made by the prosecution, and not the accused).

This is difficult to explain to people who don’t understand it, and is the one instance in which I absolutely will justify Protestantism, do so over the desires of both Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity, as Protestantism gave the western world Isaac Newton and George Berkeley, both of whom were Christian, and it was only the western world’s selfishness that inclined it to trade Berkeley for David Hume, if not also later replacing Hegel with Marx, replacing “science plus God” with “science plus godlessness”.

And so what had been the once pure studies of psychology and psychiatry became the Satanic Jewish bastardization of these things, or the transfer of the intelligent Christian contributions to neuroscience by way of Pierre Janet over to the stupid Jewish non-contributions to that field by way of Sigmund Freud.

And so Baltimore, with its historical connection to these studies, inclined me to investigate them—and in that sense I’m grateful to my hometown. Grateful it had a school such as Johns Hopkins University, back when that American university was still honest.

All these studies have since decayed, as the luminaries involved in them allowed themselves to be bought out by Jewish capital. And so whereas Christianity was well on its way to becoming a pro-science religion in the 19th century, by the end of the 20th a harsh wall had been recreated between science and Christianity, this time created by Jews and those Christians willing to bend to Jewish whims.

And so the gain was lost. Nonetheless, if you think about it, “consciousness” really was the only seriously unexplored field of science remaining by the end of the 20th century—if not also a field which harkened directly to the Christ, for he said, “These and greater things shall ye do, for I go unto the Father.” This was in regard to his apparent control over nature—his ability to walk on water, turn it into wine, wilt a fig tree at whim. Yet 2,000 years later no theologian from any grouping—Protestant, Catholic, or Orthodox—is capable of performing such works, let alone any greater works.

And so I testify to you that when Christ did those “supernatural” things, they were in fact completely natural, for this nothing unnatural he would have done as a model to humanity. Yet aside from the occasional “holy unmercernary” or intermittent “medical saint”—with scant writings coming from such persons—Christianity has been otherwise devoid of such nature studies. Instead of “greater things” we have perfected the pursuit of “lesser things”, most of which involves moving property around.

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Racial relations may be decent but you may be refused service on whether or not you say War Eagle or RTR. Not kidding.

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Racial relations may be decent but you may be refused service on whether or not you say War Eagle or RTR. Not kidding.

100% correct. My old friend from high school had stopped her wedding for the iron bowl kickoff and the bride/groom & family+friends watched the game then continued the wedding afterwards when some flight/weather etc. delays to the original scheduling of the wedding happened. We don't play when it comes to Alabama/Auburn football down here.

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