Growing up in Lexington, SC, we always knew where we would be on the Fourth of July-- at the Lexington County Peach Festival in Gilbert, of course.

No matter where you live in America, you have a "thing" you do on the Fourth of July. It's like Christmas, Thanksgiving and other holidays and most of us keep our traditions alive by revisiting our youth. I'm no exception.

Our tradition was going to the Peach Festival, which was always celebrated on the Fourth of July. Festivals are a terrific way for communities to get together. In our little hamlet, it helps kick off the political season.

For many years in South Carolina, the political season was actually over because we had these June primaries. In those days, there was only one political party in the south and it was Democratic. We looked at Republicans as liberals. The folks you elected in the primary in June were pretty much your candidates. The fall election was just a rubber stamp.

The June primaries decided the issue; the fall election was simply an opportunity to vote for President or Governor. Congress was pretty much a foregone conclusion.

Then Senator Strom Thurmond and Congressman Floyd Spence came along and changed the entire political landscape forever by switching from Democrat to Republican. By the time I left South Carolina in 1989, local attorney Tim Driggers and my brother Andy (another lawyer) were about the only two Democrats remaining. I suspect many of my brothers and sisters are now Republican as well.

The Peach Festival is today's version of the first inning of South Carolina politics, now that the two-party system is alive and well. Actually, I'm not sure there are really two parties. All the old Democrats now call themselves Republicans. They just changed labels. They're pretty much the same people who ran things before.

The Peach Festival reminds me a lot of the 1991 movie Doc Hollywood, starring Michael J. Fox, where they featured a Squash Festival in a small southern town a lot like Lexington.

Every small town mayor is just exactly like the movie's mayor, Nick Nicholson. Our Nicholson-want-to-be's were my grandfather Eli S. Mack, Sr. and his son (my uncle) Eli Mack, Jr., both of whom were the city father of Lexington exactly forty years apart. If there were ever two characters, these guys were it.

The movie Doc Hollywood was a romantic comedy, but then so is every festival in America today. It gives folks an excuse to get together and eat too much, drink too much and sweat like pigs as they cram themselves into auditoriums where the temps reach 120 degrees because they aren't air conditioned.

It gives folks a chance to have the inevitable "beauty contest," which, back in my day was an oxymoron. It gives people a chance to kill some pigs (probably reared in North Carolina, burn some chickens (probably grown in Batesburg-Leesville) and each every kind of peach concoction (definitely grown in Lexington County) that has ever been created.

Ah yes, the Lexington County peach. You can eat it straight up, in a fresh peach pie, peaches and cream, peach liqueur, peach ice cream, peach barbecue sauce, peach dipping sauce, peach bread pudding, peach cobbler with cinnamon swirl biscuits, deep dish peach pie, peach slump, smoked peaches, baked ham with peaches, peach French toast, Baltimore peach cake, Dutch peach crumb cake, ginger bourbon peaches, grilled peach Melba, peach Chutney, peach jam, lemon peach Waldorf salad, foil peaches, peach meringue pie, peach chicken on the grill, pecan-coated roast pork loin baked in peaches and on and on and on.

By definition, festivals are feasts that are set to honor Gods. In reality, this festival honors the freedom our ancestors fought for over 200 years ago. And if the by-product of that very serious act is some fun, so be it. Happy Fourth of July!