Well, we're back from our trip to Mississippi, and right now we're spending a lot of time doing laundry and trying not to think too hard about the fact that we have to go to work tomorrow, but until I have time for a entry about the trip, I thought I would share a series of photos I took the last night we were in Mississippi. We were in the Stuckey's convenience store on Highway 49, a local meeting place in Hattiesburg, waiting for our friends Chris and Lindsay so we could go eat fried catfish in Moselle, Mississippi. (Really.) Stuckey's is not just a normal convenience store. It has a large display of extremely tacky knick knacks, ranging from glass angel figurines to bumper stickers to T-shirts. The idea appears to be that if you are getting gas and suddenly remember that it's your mom's birthday, you're covered. Anyway, since I had been giving a lot of thought to why there are so many references to Jesus everywhere you look in the South, and since we were in Stuckey's, the Hallmark of the South, I decided to try to see how many gifts I could find that mentioned Jesus in under five minutes and photograph them. Turns out, quite a few. Enjoy the photos, and please don't think I'm sacreligous, I just really find this stuff fascinating. Thankfully, I'm not the first person to notice all the Jesus signs, and even if I were, I don't think I could sum it up any more eloquently than Flannery O' Connor did when she said,
"I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted. The Southerner who is not convinced of it, is very much afraid that he may have been formed in the image and likeness of God." ~ Flannery O' Connor, "The Grotesque in Southern Fiction."

And that's why when you're in Stuckey's, you can buy all three of the following items:

I like how this one was displayed right along with the Elvis paraphrenalia.