I have been slumberin' on the Cumberland, the home of the Grand Old Conglomeration, with a purple Honky Tonk and the Mother Church of Country Music, the land of Mississippian Culture with Eagle pipes carved of polished stones found in the mounds as a remnant of culture, the Bayreuth of the the "Get er Done" Nation and the home of Web Pierce's Guns, Bullits and Coins Bonneville next to the big gold plated piano they hauled all the way down from Graceland and guitars owned by Mr Travis and Chet and the once splintered sacred Gibson of Bill Monroe. I am telling you a man can do some soul searchin' in a Honky Tonk Dive sittin on that hill where an old woman turned the tide of the battle of the bluff in 1790-something when she sicked the dogs on a bunch a Cherokee boys who were displaying an angry and agitated attitude toward the white boys (and white girls too) in the fort above the slope where the Ryman sits today.

"get er done"

Try to put Nashville in a nutshell
It’s a hard sale town where the dollar is king
When your broke and drunk and standin in the rain
Nobody really cares how well you can pick and sing
By Ol’ Steven Fumholtz

So I was out sittin’ in the Tennessee sun one afternoon and I was having me a cold beer. I had been wandering about all day, dawn on Fifth Street staring at the Ryman, imaging in my mind the working folks lined up on a Saturday afternoon around the corner and back up Broadway, old men in their newest pants and jackets that hang on their frames and women in homemade dresses handing out bologna and cheese sandwiches that they had brought as they were waiting to get in and see the stars of the Grand Old Opry presented by Martha White Flour with genuine Hot Rize. I was sitting their drinking my beer picturing this image of these people who resembled the images on the old photographs in the boxes and albums in my parents house, all in clear black and white o' course, with the music emanating from the stage, bouncing off the wall and heading through the line until it hits one them transponders and breaks back out into those big radio waves filling the atmosphere with sound, crossing the land and rivers and into the receivers of the likes of John Cash and Ray Charles and others and it was at this time I realized the sun was frying my brain! I had been sitting out there too long and I had forgotten my cap. So I ran across the street to the Nashville Souvenir Emporium where they have plastic salt and pepper shakers with Banjers and Fiddles and Guitars and little thimbles shaped like cowboy hats with the “Nashville” written on them in bright red letters and shirts with Old Glory that say “IF YOU DON”T LOVE IT LEAVE IT” next to shirts with the Stars and Bars Confederate War Flag and guns that say “GET ER DONE”. It was a bunch to take in for a boy with a fried brain but I found the ball caps and I picked me out the cheapest one that wasn’t pink and I went to the counter. A lovely old woman that looked just like my Grandma Beaty was there and I said, “I would like to buy this ball cap here with the Stars and Bars and Get Er Done emblazoned on it” and I patted my bald red head and continued “gotta save my brain, that sun is hot today.” She commented on how nice the day was and how she wished she was working in her yard as she wrang me up there and I commented as I paid her my five dollars, “It’s a Get er Done ball cap made in Taiwan, don’t see these to often?” and she replied, serious as a heart attack, “They usually come from China!”

Nashville Cats, play clean as country water
Nashville Cats, play wild as mountain dew
Nashville Cats, been playin' since they's babies
Nashville Cats, get work before they're two
by John B.

As my brain began to cool under my get er done cap and I settled into my second beer my mind began to assemble all these thoughts and it made me think of Joseph Campbell and the little sea turtles and cognitive implanting at birth. I mean, they had been living under that sand developing little turtle bodies for awhile before they sprang up on that beach to run for the ocean before a gull can pick them off and I must believe there was a physical / chemical stimulant penetrating those egg shells that must summons those little turtles to the sea. I believe the different response of babies to different facial expressions to be a more compelling cognitive implanting argument but again it is a defensive mechanism to cry when scared (an ugly or neutral face) and laugh when content (a smiling baby sound making face) and it could have been reinforced from very subtle evolutionary stimuli ever since time began on page one of Genesis. So, how many chemical, physical or social stimulants do you think we (humans that is) become intoxicated with as protective devices before we spring forth from our sand? I know it all sounds so fundamental but I believe this to be the crux of the biscuit. So, as an example, let me enumerate the stimuli that permeated my psyche, as I emerged as a conscious being back in the late 1950’s and into the 1960’s. Here we go: I am a Christian. I am Caucasian. I am male. I am American. I am moderate protestant. I am descended from Northern European stock most of which passed through the British Isles. I am an Oklahoman. I am descended from the Deep South. I have primarily rural descendants. I have primarily urban descendants (two families allow some dichotomy especially the further down you dig). I have strong patriarchal influences in parts of my family (that influences my family structure). I am descended from a moderate to low economic class. I have catholic relatives. These are the things that were apart of my identity as I began to conceive my own reality with the sudden emergence of early mature consciousness in around 1963, all these things I was completely aware of before I realized I could think for myself. These were my cognitive implants!

<center><FONT COLOR="#000080">--- Edited 2 times, lastly by PSBeaty on Apr 04, 2006 ---</FONT></center>

Their going ot tear down the Grand Old Opry
Their going to tear down the sound that goes around our song
J Hartford

Couple o' beers down and I feel like walking. I am looking around and seeing in the windows and on the people around all the symbols and signs that would define the person I just described in that previous paragraph. Nashville appears to be a Mecca for my fusion group. And I thought about these images, these things we soak up as our culture, our stereotype vehicles I suppose, and what they say about us. That made me think of all the opposites of what I am and how I learned of them. My opposite view of the world was generally drawn from interactions from those who felt comfortable with me, those that felt fused to my being. It was generally not family members with the major exception of religion I suppose. I mean religion comes from subliminal training before my consciousness could sort it. I have always automatically bowed my head and closed my eyes when someone said "let us pray", an instinct. Shows you how deep that one is! But the others I learned the opposites from comments of other kids, things like, "I would rather be dead than red" or "your a f#$@in Nigger" or "faggot" as you go further down the line they become less serious, often emotional, but less serious in intent I suppose. Things like calling French people Frogs or saying "Tuck Fexas" and making that longhorn symbols with your finger upside down, things like that. The thing is that people who assume you are in the same group say these things around you without inhibition assuming you agree and reinforce this bonding defensive thing and when you are young you are influenced by it. The mind in the way it is structured is not very forgiving to these kinds of implants, and they stick with you. I know I am touched in the head but I am just trying to understand how people can believe the things they do and turn them into action. People like Hitler or Bin Laden or Bush or Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell and perhaps it is not even these people as much as the people in the fusion groups conned into folly by these "leaders" through emotion that relates to these inherent cognitive defense mechanisms of religion, race and nationality that I am trying to understand.

<center><FONT COLOR="#000080">--- Edited 1 times, lastly by PSBeaty on Apr 05, 2006 ---</FONT></center>

I know it is fundamental but is this how it happens? Tell me, is this where a change can come? What do I need to change to make all this hatred go away? I am trying to figure it out God or whoever, I will bow my head and pray if you help me sort through this and help start making some real changes, how do we make the survival value of fear of the other fellow extinct?

So I ended up in Ernest Tubb’s Record Store. He doesn’t actually sale vinyl records anymore (although there is a decent vinyl shop on the street that had an original later Jimmy Bryant release that looked interesting). This place is particularly dangerous for me because they carry a number of titles that I would not normally purchase unless I found it accidentally on the shelf. I was fairly safe since in general I am adequately supplied with country and honky tonk recordings but… it is dangerous. The first item I pulled was a Rose Maddox thing. The problem was that I recognized the whole band in the picture there and they are all favorites of mine including Byron Berline, Herb Pederson, JD Maness and Jon Jorgenson with a special Merle Haggard appearance. Next was a greatest hit’s by country music’s greatest song butchers, Homer and Jethro (I love those guys and all I had till now was old vinyl). The third was the most interesting and something I had been looking for (and probably would have ended up ordering it anyway) for some time. It is the Earl Scruggs Revue Anniversary Specials #1 and #2. When I was just a youngster buck I wore out two copies of Special #1 and made a pretty good dent in #2. Oh my, good songs and excellent performances by the Scruggs boys as well as all those guests. Some highlights are Banjo Man with Rusty Young and Jim Messina. Swimming Song with Loudon Wainwright III, Bleeker Street Rag with Reggie Young. The best, my favorites anyway, are the Scruggs, Cash and Ramblin’ Jack songs including Passing Through (first time I heard Joan Baez do that Dylan vocal imitation was this song), Hey Porter (great Johnny Cash Vocal with the don’t step on my feet when you hit me line) and Song to Woody with Johnny Jack and a rare Earl vocal. I was standing there having a Midnight Jamboree in my brain.I had to get out of there..its dangerous!

ernest tubbs...i would always laugh when my dad would mention names like that. whatever he would be saying, i was confident he knew what he was talking about. i didn't retain a whole lot of it but i do remember him telling me about how him and (some names i'm not 100% sure of but one of them was definitely roy clark) how they would play music on a local radio station here (i mean they would play guitar and sing in a microphone on the radio station, not at the same time, but they were there at the same time) (before roy clark was really famous) ANYWAY and after knowing that, whenever i would see roy clark on tv smiling the way he does, and knowing what i do of my dad, i imagined the lot of 'em were a bunch of cards...
i'll have to ask my dad if he's ever heard of homer and jethro...
anyway, i don't mean to interrupt...carry on! (please?)

<center><FONT COLOR="#000080">--- Edited 1 times, lastly by agnes on Apr 05, 2006 ---</FONT></center>

well of course it was music that brought me to Nashville as I love all kinds. One recording on that Homer and Jethro that is really cool is Baby, Its Cold Outside (you know the I really can't stay But Baby please don't go THat Ray Charles and ...what was her name, oh this is embarassing..any way my most recent favorite version is by Delbert McClinton and Suzy Boguss (she is the cutest thang). So anyway, the H and J version has June Carter singing the womans part with Chester Atkins on guitar recorded in '49, before she done went and married Carl Smith and had Charlene Carter. But I love country music. In OKC in the early 60's we had competing Furniture companies (I know its weird) and these were family businesses, we had Jude and Jody's (brothers) and we also had The Mathis Brothers, does this sound like family bands or what. Well your right, they both had honky tonk style bands patterned after Hank Thompsons Brazos Valley Boys (who were the local big stars at the time playing in places like the Trianon Ballroom, there hits like Drivin' Nails In My Coffin (ever time I drink another brew) and Hey, Mister Bartender, (Please don't be so slow) and, of course, a rockin' version of Oklahoma Hills). So Jude and Jody and the Mathis Brothers had competing local television shows where they would play in the local TV studios one before and one after the local news (one of the stations was WKY one was KOCO, one was owned by EKGaylord (who revitalized GW's career by giving him the Texas Rangers job and the other had Kerr Mcgee interest (who killed Karen Silkwood) but in the days of my youth it was all my naive fusion world I was emerging into. My father didn't watch these shows because he preferred to flip back and forth between the evening news. But, across the street, Charles O'Dell watched them ever night. He had one them steel tables (a fender I believe) and he would slide the bar on the strings with a little amp next to him turned way down low and I remember songs like Hot Rod Lincoln and Smoke Smoke Smoke That Cigarette stuff like that and the commercials were funny to, I even liked the Hamms beer commercials with the Indian cartoons. What was that woman that did that song with Ray, it is driving me crazy.

Anyway, Jethro retired to Evanston IL and was persuaded to return to the music business by none other than Steve Goodman (I know you recall) and they did some great stuff together. But there is a really good recording called Jethro and Tiny, Back to Back that I think was produced by Dave Grisman in the 70's, its Jethro with Tiny Moore from Bob Wills band for an acoustic / electric mandolin duo, great stuff.

You bring up Roy Clark which sorta gets to the reason I came to Nashville. I got tickets to see Merle Haggard in the Ryman (where I will probably go into some detail if I get the chance) and I also got tickets to the new Gaylord (same one I'm afraid)Grand Old Opry on Friday night (were Roy Clark showed up all the way from his home in Tulsa) and played Ghost Riders in the Sky. To me i love cosmic coincidences because this happened to be the week Buck Owens passed. As you know Buck and Merle were the Bakersfield sound, Roy worked with Buck forever (and I watched Hee Haw even as a young Hippie Freak for the music and the humor). Of course they all have Okie connections (Buck was from Sherman Texas but had family in OKC and he was often a guest on the Mathis Brothers show singing in harmony, "They got them Fire Blazin' Prices at Mathis Brothers Furniture!" Roy's is a little different. As a youg man he got the gig in the female Elvis' band, Wanda Jackson. Wanda was from Capital Hill (where both of my parents were from) and got a job as a young girl on WKY singing. Well she created quite a stir at Capitol Hill High (where both my parents graduated and they were our arch rivals at US Grant High) after Elvis came out by doing a rockin version of Hard Headed Woman at the school dance. Created such a controversy that she ended up touring with Elvis (they have a video of her doing that song with a shimy skirt in the Hall of fame there in Nashville). Anyway, Roy got one of best early gigs in her band, my favorite Roy lick from Wanda Jackson recordings is Tunnel of Love, its a psycho Em lick that twists like a tunnel around Wanda singing "Here I go Fallen down down down, my mind is twisted and my head is spinnin around and around as I go deep into the tunnel of love (background singers go ...OOOH oOOOH (Wanda's recent remake had Poison Ivy from the Cramps playing the lick in a lower key with lots of reverb and echo, still very scary)

I love music, I do!

edited to say Betty Carter! it came to me as I was walkin away!

<center><FONT COLOR="#000080">--- Edited 1 times, lastly by PSBeaty on Apr 06, 2006 ---</FONT></center>

I wonder if Charles still has that little Fender Lap Steel. That was a 50's model. I saw him at dad's funeral. I have to give him a call.

Burnin down colored town

There are really two outstanding drivers in my own personal fusion image as I came of age, one was religion and the other was race. Where I grew up we were actually quit culturally diverse, we had Mexicans, Chinese, Apaches, Cheyenne, Seminole, Choctaw, everybody claimed to have a little Cherokee in their blood, Southerners, Westerners and even a few Northerners but the overwhelming dividing line in race was we had Whites and we had coloreds. Like I said before, I can’t recall a time when either Mom or Dad said anything that you could consider racist. I mean we would go eat at Sambo’s occasionally and I thought nothing of the paintings of the little black kids in the jungle all over the walls. I knew the tales of Little Black Sambo and such. But, I can’t recall racism in the neighborhood were I grew up among the adults, but oh my, them kids. I was well educated in the evils of the scary niggardly things around the ages of 5 and 6 and well new about such admired characters as George Wallace, so this had to be coming from somewhere. I even joined in occasionally not knowing anything at all about black people because I did not know any. I remember one of the first times I ever saw a black man, scared the shit out of me! I was over playing by the side of the house with little plastic army men or cowboys and indians or something and I heard this rumbling noise and looked up and this big black man was looking me straight in the eyes. He didn’t look happy and he didn’t look nice as he threw the empty garbage can down and stomped around the corner carrying an even bigger garbage can on his shoulder. I went out and looked up the street and there was a big yellow truck driven by a white guy whom I assumed owned these niggers. There was a herd of about 5 black men all up and down the street walking up the driveways and collecting the garbage and hauling it down to the street where they would gather in the back of the truck and throw the stuff in. I watched in amazement as the garbage was crushed into nothing at all and the black men turned and walked away to collect another load. I saw them grab hold the truck as it drove further down the street and they all jumped off to go about collecting more. They were like trained animals, something you would see in a carnival or something. I wondered what do they do with the garbage and where were they going with it. I imagined that at night they were locked up somewhere in a mysterious place I had heard tell of that was called, colored town.

There was a courageous fellow in my world around this time who began interpreting things like the constitution a little differently and paying attention to recent Supreme Court rulings more closely and who essentially became the focus and root of all evil in my neighborhood at that time. His name was Luther Bohanon, a man who would have, in another era, possibly been lynched and could have been shot or burned out in the era in which he lived. He was appointed to the Oklahoma District Court bench in 1961 by President John Kennedy, mandated the integration of Oklahoma City's public schools and ended segregation in housing. His rulings helped to eliminate beatings of inmates, overcrowding and other abuses in Oklahoma's prisons. Born in 1902, the farmboy-turned-lawyer and then jurist enjoined the Food and Drug Administration from banning the importation, by terminally ill cancer patients, of the unproven drug laetrile (a decision subsequently reversed). He also helped establish the right of Native Americans to sue for compensation for lands taken from them. I heard his name used in vain for many years and at times I said things myself (which I didn’t understand but I was just caught in an emotional caterwaul as a display for my defensive fusion compadres).

maybe you guys grew up in different worlds, but me, I was part of a grand social experiment called desegregation. I remember when the local amusement parks ended colored nights and I had black children in line next to me by the roller coasters. I remember the first buses bringing black kids to what had previously been an all white school. I remember turning the wrong corner during a race riot and feeling the blows of three angry black teenage boys at what had previously been an all white school. I remember hearing somebody had died in the race riot at what had previusly been an all white school. I remember seeing rocks hurled at buses carrying black kids away after the race riot from what had previously been an all white school. I remember white families moving from the white neighborhood to places with names like Moore or Mustang, anywhere outside of OKC limits, so their kids wouldn't have to attend what had previously been an all white school. Anyone else remember this kind of stuff?

i'll try to keep this short...don't wanna try to fit too much in...
anyway, not like that exactly psb...i do have a good friend (black) who while living somewhere in oklahoma, jes' a little kid barely old enough to have the memory, had the experience of having three older (white) kids come along, toss his brand new puppy dog high into the air, landing it on the ground having it's insides spill out from it's ass...that's gotta leave a lasting impression. And there was of course never a shortage of the use of the "N" word. But anyway, he still managed to have plenty of white hoodlum friends <img src="http://www.arlo.net/ubb/smilies/smile.gif" width=15 height=15>
i have also been a complete idiot when it comes to "race relations". when i was little and going to school,,,there weren't that many black kids, but what few there were, i managed to find them, and became friends with some...i don't know why...i must have been crazy...and had no idea why it would amount to a hill of beans to anyone. in those days, i don't recall ever having to fight with any black kids (that came later) but was always having to fight off some white kids (always boys...don't remember fights with the girls...and i do mean fist fights).
i eventually began to realize people's color mattered a whole lot to some folks...
when i moved from there...to another area of the county, there were more black kids...anyway, quite naturally i would have to pick one of them to become friends with (mutual friendship)...big deal. next thing i know, certain of the black kids didn't seem to like it and gave us a hard time and her a worse time...i didn't know what their problem was...and she (my friend) was ashamed to tell me....that it was because she was black and i was white (not to mention scrawny). a-course, me and my big mouth hadda go over to three of these girls and give 'em what fer...push came to shove hard and they all decided to go have the biggest black kid (girl this time) in the school come beat my ass...oh great, i'm thinkin' now i have to stand up to this person whether i want to or not, (and i didn't want to), so by this time a mob had come round the corner for this fight about to happen with the biggest kid (girl) in the school in front and all this hollerin', "there she is! that's the girl!" i looked the big girl right in the eyes and when she caught a glimpse of me, she said, "her??...I got no problem with her! Ya'll go on!" and left! needless to say, i was relieved, but even better, my faith in some people (and i do mean that generally) being okay had been replenished...well i don't know maybe it was a tie, cuz i was relieved!
'course there are a lot more stories that are worse...or better...depending on how you look at it. <img src="http://www.arlo.net/ubb/smilies/smile.gif" width=15 height=15>

I remember growing up in the '50's. A broken family, my parents separated. My oldest sister got married while still in her teens to avoid being a ward of the state. Living with my mother, brother and other sister. I was the youngest. Mom didn't have a great paying job, so we lived in the tenements owned by the Pearle brothers, located behind the hotel that bore their name in Bristol, Connecticut. The tenements were originally three family houses, one per floor, converted to seven or nine family houses with two or three to a floor. If you were lucky, there was one bathroom on on your floor at the end of the hall. The more ya squeeze in, the more money ya make! But there was always room for the roaches and the rats!

There we all were, Black, Hispanic and White folks living next door to each other, most barely having enough coin to pay the rent and buy the basics. Those with cars drove those without if they needed a ride. Everybody watched everybody else's kids when the need arose, shared meals, partied with each other, helped each other out. I'm sure that it was there, but I don't recall much racism or segregation, though I was barely five years old at the time. We were all in the same fix, caught in the same cycle of poverty, everybody trying to keep their own and their neighbors' heads above the water. I think I first noticed racism and bigotry when I started school. That's the kind of thing that's taught to you. It doesn't come to you naturally.

<center><FONT COLOR="#000080">--- Edited 3 times, lastly by Captain Zap on Apr 07, 2006 ---</FONT></center>

I love your comments but I was thinking about words and things. The song below has been a fav of mine forever and I think it gets to the point that racism wasn't isn't regional and I chose race over religion to start my bullshit as race trumps religion when it comes to hatred, Sunis and Shiites and Jews may all be the children of Abraham but they are cousins at best racially and man they can kill each other without our help. So read ever lyric below cause its a good on'.

Last night I saw Lester Maddox on a TV show
With some smart ass New York Jew
And the Jew laughed at Lester Maddox
And the audience laughed at Lester Maddox too
Well he may be a fool but he's our fool
If they think they're better than him they're wrong
So I went to the park and I took some paper along
And that's where I made this song

We talk real funny down here
We drink too much and we laugh too loud
We're too dumb to make it in no Northern town
And we're keepin' the niggers down

We got no-necked oilmen from Texas
And good ol' boys from Tennessee
And colleges men from LSU
Went in dumb. Come out dumb too
Hustlin' 'round Atlanta in their alligator shoes
Gettin' drunk every weekend at the barbecues
And they're keepin' the niggers down

CHORUS
We're rednecks, rednecks
And we don't know our ass from a hole in the ground
We're rednecks, we're rednecks
And we're keeping the niggers down

Now your northern nigger's a Negro
You see he's got his dignity
Down here we're too ignorant to realize
That the North has set the nigger free

Yes he's free to be put in a cage
In Harlem in New York City
And he's free to be put in a cage on the South-Side of Chicago
And the West-Side
And he's free to be put in a cage in Hough in Cleveland
And he's free to be put in a cage in East St. Louis
And he's free to be put in a cage in Fillmore in San Francisco
And he's free to be put in a cage in Roxbury in Boston
They're gatherin' 'em up from miles around
Keepin' the niggers down

Rave on Randy

I was in the seventh grade in la (lower Alabama) when it happened. We called it integration though. There was a riot at my school when it first started, but after a while it seemed to be the grown-ups were having a harder time with it than the kids. You always have those diehard assholes, but the bulk of us youngins learned to get along. The disease is still prevalent there, though. That's one of the main reasons I moved to Oregon. Even though things are better here,
I didn't escape it. The difference here seems to be that the discrimination is directed at hispanics. I guess Kris was right:

Everybody needs somebody to look down on
Who they can feel better than at any time they please
Someone doin' something dirty that decent folks can frown on
If you can't find nobody else then help yourself to me

Jesus was a Capricorn

<FONT size="1">Edited to say: This summer I might have drowned</FONT s>

<center><FONT COLOR="#000080">--- Edited 2 times, lastly by Goofus on Apr 07, 2006 ---</FONT></center>