pb

when i was a kid i'd wake early, yes early, on Sunday mornings for a game of checkers with my dad. amazingly, our dog had eaten an equal number of both red and black checkers, so we always started with with an equal, albeit shortened, number of 'men.' i think dad let me win a lot.

after the board game he'd get out the much duct-taped and clothes-hangar antennaed AM-only radio and tune it to a west Louisiana station playing nothing but old Cajun music. none of that electric Zydeco crap, but deep Gulf swamp-rat acoustic recordings from God only knows when. in a French language bastardized twice removed (read your Cajun history), i'd hear these seemingly hard-bitten men and women wail and keen and sing over the one speaker while my dad made french toast for us. mom and brother would wake up a little later and then it was time for church. dad always winked at me during prayers because he and i never closed our eyes when the pastor asked us to.

i miss dad. i miss mom. i miss my bro. i miss having them to lean on. the older i get the more i realize how for granted i took having people who loved me, who i trusted, in my life. i miss texas and the simplicity and the humble day to day, steadfast way the people live their lives there.

anyhow, my whole point here is that i seem to be reviving this tradition of waking early, well, earlier than normal, on Sundays and making myself breakfast and listening to my own form of acoustic roots music. i listen to bluegrass and think of dad and mom and gumbo and how my brother always hated to have his hair combed for church.

i'm aware this all may be some idealistic version of my memories of a simpler era of my life, but to me they're real and true and i like them just the way they are.

here's a sample song of what really gets me to thinking on me and my bro's bunk beds, the ever-burn-hole sprouting of my dad's welding shirts, and my mom's perfect motherly hands combing my hair for church.


Poor Man, Old Crow Medicine Show