Free cheese

A friend told me about the roadside sign she’d seen driving Highway 290 between Taylors and Greer: “There is no free cheese in the mouse trap,” it said. A sermon teaser for a tiny non-denominational church.

I have to wonder what the cheese agreed to accept in exchange for its freedom. Or did it have any choice in the matter? Or … am I misunderstanding the message?

There’s a song on Randy Newman’s “Good Ol’ Boys” album that he wrote from a Southerner’s point of view, mocking the North’s post-integration claim to moral superiority. Cheese-wise, it sounds to me like something that America could be singing about itself today …

Now your northern nigger’s a Negro
You see he’s got his dignity
Down here we’re too ignorant to realize
That the North has set the nigger free
Yes he’s free to be put in a cage
In Harlem in New York City
And he’s free to be put in a cage in the South-Side of Chicago
And the West-Side
And he’s free to be put in a cage in Hough in Cleveland
And he’s free to be put in a cage in East St. Louis
And he’s free to be put in a cage in Fillmore in San Francisco
And he’s free to be put in a cage in Roxbury in Boston
They’re gatherin’ ’em up from miles around
Keepin’ the niggers down