The Department of State just announced that Hank Locklin will be the sole inductee in the Florida Artists Hall of fame for 2007. Anybody who likes country music knows exactly who Lawrence Hankins "Hank" Locklin is: a three-time Grammy award finalist who sold 15 million records, and whose 1960 hit "Please Help Me I'm Falling" was -- get this -- ranked the second most popular country song for the first 100 years of Billboard. Even if you don't know the song, you've seen that TV infomercial for "Classic Country" hits that features the tune. 

Locklin, 88, is from the town of McLellan -- a suburb of Munson -- hard by the Florida-Alabama line. In 1970, when Lawton Chiles was becoming Walkin' Lawton on his way to the U.S. Senate, he kept a daily diary of his observations. He walked into a grocery on U.S. 90 near Jay, Fla., and recorded that while in the store, "I met Hank Locklin's mother!"

OK, now back to Florida politics.