The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!

I got out of bed early the other morning and as I rubbed my eyes and adjusted my Fruit of the Looms, my wife, who was already up, came into the bedroom.

"The Russians have invaded Georgia," she said. I was afraid this was going to happen. I figured it was just a matter of time before something of this magnitude would occur, given the unstable political and military climate of the world today.

"Omigosh!" I exclaimed, pulling on my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles shorts with the velcro pocket flaps.

"Have they gotten to Atlanta yet or are they headed south?"

She wasn't sure.

It's a pretty serious thing when a foreign country decides to invade a U.S. state, especially one adjacent to the one in which you're living.

The Russians have invaded Georgia. I shook my head. I couldn't believe it. I'll bet not even George Orwell could have foreseen anything like this.

"You can check out what they're saying on TV if you want," my wife said.

"No time darling," I answered. "This calls for drastic measures. We can't have this. WE WON'T HAVE THIS!"

The first order of business was to find out if indeed these were REAL Russians because sometimes other invaders will sneak up on you cleverly disguised as something else altogether. That's how Sherman took Georgia back during The War of Northern Aggression. He and his army dressed up in ladies' attire and infiltrated Georgia. There they were all decked out in those fancy hoop dresses and wearing bonnets and sashes and waving hand fans in front of their faces and such and tricked the Southern army into thinking they were ladies.

One minute there they were, sitting on the porch of the plantation house sipping sweet tea like all was well, pinkie finger extended outward from the fine china cups and then, all of a sudden — BOOM! BANG! — they opened fire. I don't know how they got muskets hidden under their dresses, but somehow they did. Killed a bunch of unsuspecting Southern gentlemen before anybody knew what was happening. By the time the Confederate army figured out they had been bushwhacked by a bunch of cross-dressing Union solders, it was too late. They were forced to retreat.

They should have known something was up when those buggies began to roll into town with bumper stickers on them that read "VOTE ABE IN '64."

But no one paid much attention at the time because Abe was a pretty common name.

But that was then and this is now.

Somehow Vladimir Putin's forces had decided to try to conquer the United States and for whatever reason, he was starting in Georgia.

I headed for my telephone and glanced at the TV while I started dialing numbers. I saw a couple of explosions. "Boy," I said to myself. "I hope that wasn't Turner Field."

"What are you going to do?" my wife asked.

"I'm going to call some of the boys and tell them it's happening," I told her.

"Tell them what's happening?" she asked.

"That the invasion has started," I told her. "And this time we're going to be ready.

"Maybe you'd better leave it to the military," she recommended.

"Well, that will be fine," I answered back, "but we might be able to get there before they do. We have to stem the tide. If they're heading north, they could be here in a matter of hours and I don't want my house blown up by a bunch of commies."

"Well, y'all just be careful," she said.

"We will," I told her. "If they get past us, heaven help us all."

So an hour or so later, we convened at — where else — the Wal-mart parking lot, a mini-platoon of pickup trucks of every color, size and shape. Some with those big oversized tires and others of the lowrider variety, sporting those fancy colorful neon running boards.

"Listen men," I told them as they all jumped up in the beds of their trucks for last-minute instructions.

"The Russians have invaded Georgia," I told them.

An unsettling murmur moved through the crowd.

"What we're going to do is try to intercept them. That means we might have to make a stand either at Clemson or Anderson. We've got to do whatever it takes to keep them out of South Carolina. We've got to protect our homes, our young 'uns and our women folk.

"So make sure your gun racks are securely mounted on your vehicles and be careful about any Southern belle types that might approach your vehicle. That's how Sherman tricked us back in 1864."

As engines roared to life and the safeties clicked off on the shotguns, a voice called out from the middle of the pickup truck armada.

"Do I have time to get a can of Skoal before we leave?" "Yeah, I reckon that will be OK."

Then my cell phone rang.

"Hello dear, what's up. I ain't got time to chat. We're about to move out. We're expecting some pretty heavy fighting."

"What's that?" "There's another Georgia?" "It's where?" "A whole other country, you say." "Huh. Who'd a thunk it?"

"Well, that's entirely different."

"Alrighty then. So I guess I'll be home in a litte while. You need anything from Wal-mart?"

So I explained it to the boys and some were relieved and some others were kinda disappointed. That can happen when you think you're going to get to do some shooting and then you find out you're not.

So it was a false alarm. Those Russians better thank their lucky stars.

Klonie Jordan (editor@gaffneyledger.com) is executive editor of The Gaffney Ledger.