I consider it a disgrace for an area as large as the Triangle to have only one country music station on the FM radio dial. After all, we live in the heart of Dixie. This is where country music got its roots and is home to some of its biggest and most loyal fans.



Ronnie Milsap and Randy Travis were born in this state. Dolly Parton, who many consider the queen of country, has a theme park just across the Tennessee state line. Yet, here in the Triangle, especially on Sunday afternoons when our lone local country station is airing the NASCAR race, you can't find a country music song on the radio.



Now, I love NASCAR just as much as any Earnhardt fan, but, I can't listen but to a few laps on the radio before I'm ready to hear some good country music. With the way Earnhardt's been running lately, I need some lively country music to cheer me up after a race. You know, NASCAR and country music go hand in had like Tim McGraw and his cowboy hat.



Until a few months ago, we had at least two choices for country music on the dial. However, if you haven't heard by now, one of the stations was replaced by a talk radio format, leaving us with one country station and a lot of hot air.

I was driving around on a recent afternoon, in dire need of a good George Strait tune, but, sadly, I couldn't find any of George’s music on the radio. Our only country music station was playing a song by one of the newer artists that sounded a lot more like pop music than country too me. On the other former country music station, there was some blabber mouth, who makes millions of dollars a year, and flies from place to place on his own personal jet, whining about how bad things are in this country.

I don't care what your political ideology might be, I just can't understand how anyone could listen to the rhetoric on talk radio, and from other media outlets, without forming a distorted and negative view of the world. If I listened to that racket pouring through my car speakers for three or four hours a day, I swear when I got home I'd be ready to crash my car through the garage doors. My wife would probably kill me. However, maybe it would shatter my radio so I wouldn't have to hear that trash anymore, even if it was a mistake that I ended up on that particular station in the first place.

It would be impossible to blame any particular political party for the junk that's fouling up the radio and television airwaves. As far as I'm concerned, they're all equally responsible. It's beyond my realm of concept to comprehend how constantly hurling insults and spreading half-truths on the airwaves can bring this country together and help us to overcome the hardship and difficulties that we, as a nation, are facing.



Hopefully, sooner rather than later, folks will get tired of the rhetoric and they'll give us back our country music. Over the years, I've learned more about moving beyond life's difficulties from country music than one of those blabbermouths could ever begin to teach me anyhow.