John Montgomery Presents This Week's	April 21, 2001	Creep Logo by Alan Fraser
	Authorities in Pound, Virginia
	Footloose and Dancing Free

Remember "Footloose", the 1984 movie about a podunk town that didn't allow dancing? Kevin Bacon played a high school kid who moved there from Chicago, then riled up the locals by getting his fellow students all shaking their tails, including the hard-assed minister's daughter, played by the succulent Lori Singer. The film featured some fun dance routines and a killer title song by Kenny Loggins. There was no way to watch it without getting a serious case of happy feet. It was great entertainment, but nothing as stupid as that could ever happen in real life, could it?

Welcome to Pound, Virginia, where real life comes straight from Hollywood. Pound is a coal mining community in the west part of the state where they take their dancin' seriously. That is to say, it ain't allowed. No dancin' without a permit, says Pound. And no permits "to anyone who is not a proper person, nor to a person who is not a person of good moral character." Of course, that's no help because people of good moral character don't dance anyway, do they? No sir, not in Pound.

Actually, those sorts of laws have been in existence in various conservative parts of the country for years, but they're rarely enforced. No so in Pound. Bill Elam owns the Golden Pine Restaurant and Lounge there, and every Saturday night, hundreds of town residents come to get their feets to do their stuff. The Pound Town Council threatened to shut Bill down, so he went to court and had their anti-dancing measure declared unconstitutionally broad. As any attorney knows, there's nothing worse than an unconstitutional broad on the dance floor.

But the pud-pounding putzes from the Pound Town Council aren't so easily told to pound salt. They passed another law that they believe is legal and once again are hassling Bill and the Golden Pines. Town attorney Gary Gilliam says he'll serve Bill with a court summons if he doesn't retire all those hoofin' cowboy boots.

What's all this about, anyway? Why is Pound afraid of dancing? It should come as no surprise that it's God himself who laid down the dancing law in Pound. "I can never see a time when dancing can be approved of, especially with people who are not married," said Tim Shepherd, an evangelist for the Church of Christ in Pound. "Dancing is one of those things that entices. It imitates sexual contact."

Reverend Tim tells it like it is. It's all about sex. It's always about sex with these religious zealots. Their problem is: they're not having any. Our problem is: They don't want anyone else to have any, either. It's not enough for Tim and his sexually repressed congregation not to kick up their heels. Nobody can dance. And the Pound Town Council, which has now become a faith-based institution, stuffs Tim's version of morality right up everyone's sinful jigglin' butt cheeks.

So the next time you're in Pound, grab your partner and get on down to the Golden Pine for a good old fashion hootenanny. If God is truly just, that drunken, miniskirted, tattooed Lori Singer lookalike you'll see dancing on the tabletops and swinging from the disco ball will be Reverend Tim's daughter.