Swamp Thing

Tomorrow afternoon, my son and I head for the Swamp. We are meeting my cousin and his son for a weekend of family, fun, food, frosted mugs and football. And yes, with the way Auburn has been playing, I could have added another word that started with the same consonant, but let’s hope we’re not fish food.

Swamps, in general, are seen as creepy kinds of places. It has been the backdrop for a number of (less than) artistic endeavors. In 1973, Jim Stafford wrote a song about “Swamp Witch Hattie” which told about her living “back in the swamp, where the strange green reptiles crawl.” DC Comics had a long running and quite successful comic book series entitled “Swamp Thing”. The character was a humanoid mass of vegetable matter that fights to protect his swamp home. This lead to a 1990’s television series that ran for 3 years by the same name. Mark Lindsay Chapman, who starred in this forgotten and useless series, went on to have roles in such feature films as Legend of the Mummy and Titanic. And I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that Florida’s own Lynyrd Skynyrd had a hit song written by Ronnie Van Zant entitled “Swamp Music” (something about “gonna watch me a houndog catch a coon…”) Artists of all kinds have tried to somehow capture the mystique of swamps.

But for me, swamps have one characteristic above all others. Swamps smell. Oh, sure…they’re teeming with organisms, but swamps are usually gross and slimy and stink. And why are they gross and slimy and stink? Because they are stagnant! Because they cannot move! Because they are stuck in the same quagmired mud hole from now until forever! And this forces everything that deficates, urinates, rots or dies there, to stay and decay right there in that cesspoolish bog. And it stinks. It’s a post-Katrina Super Dome. Actually, you can make the argument that a swamp is nothing more than God’s personal septic tank. But hey…it happens!

Gators and snakes and green flies and maggots live in swamps. They try to eat and clean as much of the putrefied gunk as possible, but it’s a hopeless task. They will never be able to clean up their own back yard. And so they are relegated to life in a septic tank.

Why, then, would you give this acronym to your football stadium...."The Swamp"....???
I guess some people are enamored by swamps. They see them as mystical and eerie and spooky and frightening. They think that anyone who enters should tremble and be afraid. They think that “the swamp is alive with a thousand eyes, An’ all of them watchin’ you”. They think anyone who enters the swamp is gator bait.

Maybe. Or maybe not. Basically, swamps just stink. When Auburn invades The Swamp on Saturday, if they hold their noses AND the ball.....after the night is through and the stink is settled, we could just have an alligator grin on our face as we leave The Swamp, saying to a bunch of dejected Floridians …..”See ya’ later, alligator!”

War Eagle,

WJLaneSr