It is certainly true that the more optimistic gospel of the Methodists and others permeated the regions of the South, and many of us have tried to get the hang of perfectionism. We believe in God. We try to believe in goodness, in perfectability, but underneath is the fear that we are going it alone in the world and getting euchred--flawed, unreliable and absurd, pretending that we are worthy and in control. Yet we know that our dignity is a too-small hat in the winds of truth. All people know this, but here in this region we keep it uppermost in minds so that the only reasonable thing to do about it is to LAUGH--at ourselves and at others who pretend, against odds, that all is well with the human enterprise.