Horrid time on the highway with Waylon and finding solace in the fact monkeys don't wear silver suits

I know monkeys don’t wear silver suits, but 35 years ago, two pretty young women with unshaved armpits were parked in the middle of the two-lane blacktop in front of Waylon Jennings’ house when I made the split-second decision to live. I didn’t like the other choice, so it wasn’t that difficult.
I’ve been thinking of that day and how Johnny Rodriguez offered refuge a lot lately, since that was the last time I was involved in an automobile accident, before the previously mentioned Big Bam of July 4.
My son, Joe, my near-constant sidekick – I’m just glad he survived our most recent death-defying adventure – says I didn’t swear too much when the car hit ours recently. I supposed I cussed, as I was and remain, as the doc tells me, “concussed.”
Oh help me, please doctor, I’m damaged…. Having to search the mental dictionary for words can be frustrating for a writer or even for someone like me.
But the doc says I’ll be better as just soon as I am able. And I’ve gotta admit I have been finding some good alternate words, both for cussing and for conversation. Lots of weird compound phrases using “vile” and “pig” and “insurance” and “oil” and “Shotgun Dick.” Hold, it I guess those were words I used before. See, I’m getting better all the time.
And it is with all of this in mind that I think about the pair of University of Michigan swimmers (or so they told me, to explain their garb) who had stopped their convertible on Old Hickory Boulevard, at the Brentwood-Nashville line, to gape at Waylon’s house 3½ decades ago .
By the way, whoever bought that old compound -- where magic was created and strange music and perhaps smoke floated in the air -- kept the iron “W” over the compound gate. (Did I ever tell you about the day I saw Willie Nelson, driving a big, old Pontiac, pulling out of that driveway, at least 30 years ago? He seemed happy and probably hungry. Thick smoke trailed from the car. I’m not sure if it was exhaust. )
The first time I crossed beneath that gate was at the height of the Outlaws movement and I was in a moment of despair.
I had been cruising along Old Hickory – a rural stretch back then – when the old Plymouth Duster I was driving came over a rise and there were 100 feet or less between me and the pretty girls in the green convertible.
Since Waylon and Willie and Tompall and Jessi were riding high back then, I didn’t blame them for stopping, although I’d have preferred if they’d pulled off the road so I didn’t have to ruin their day and mine.
Now, I admire their fandom of Waymore. I remain a huge fan, even though he remains dead, as many of you likely will agree. I know because I helped write his obituary. Interviewed Ramblin’ Jack Elliott for the obit. “He Waylonized songs,” said Ramblin’ Jack, from his San Francisco apartment.
If I was to ramble, I’d likely end up in San Francisco on occasion, too. If only because I like the Golden Gate, sourdough bread, sea lions, cable cars and the late Jerry Garcia. My son, Joe, says I ought to go there and swim out to Alcatraz. You’re supposed to swim away from the island, kid. Watch that Eastwood movie again.
Anyway these pretty young swimmers were stopped by Waylon’s house and I came over the rise and I couldn’t. Couldn’t stop, I mean.
Brentwood was still a rural outpost, served by the Pony Express and protected by Matt Dillon. Hold it, perhaps it was UPS and Bob Dylan…. Regardless, on that day my choices were to either slam on the brakes and try not to hit the girls in front of me too hard or to go off the road and go airborne, likely rolling several times and dying in a rocky cow pasture, my bloodied head covered with manure.
There are those today, particularly in the world of Shotgun Dick and his vile band of insurance and oil barons who would have preferred I take the latter course (see, I told you it’s all coming back now). In reality, they probably don’t care what happens to me. I’m just a gnat. They have bigger targets like The Big O.
On the topic of the guy from Chicago, my old ball-playing pal, well he promised me he was going to save the economy and end the war and bring me health care. … OK, I know those are impossible tasks … But I think it was Tim McGraw who said “Ya Gotta Believe” when he and Kenny Chesney went for that wild ride on police horses in Buffalo a decade ago. No, it was his dad, the great Tug McGraw who said that. “Ya Gotta Believe!”
So I believe in The Big O’s integrity, even if his delivery – like Tug’s – has been a bit iffy. But why’s he vacationing in Maine when he and Michelle preach that the rest of us suckers should spend our money basking on the oil-glazed beaches of the Gulf Coast?
You suppose he and Michelle and the kids don’t want to collect tar balls and dead fish instead of shells on their beach strolls while watching dolphin carcasses wash over their toes?
C’mon, Big O, man up. You let Big Oil hoodwink you on this one. And those are the same guys you are listening to about that ridiculous war. Call me when you get back from Maine, so we can shoot hoops again. It might help me. It sure would help you.
Back to Waylon and the big wreck of 1975 or so.
Instead of dying in cow manure in a field of rocks owned by Eddy Arnold – who came to be a close friend but who on that day I believe cussed me for blocking traffic -- I chose to live, so I applied the brakes and tapped the pretty girls in the rear end. It was a long time ago when I was older. The Duster I was driving was torn up, but it was repaired in a week or two and I was back on the road to what now I’ve determined is eventual ruin. The girls’ rear-end looked fine. And there wasn’t much damage to the car. No tickets were issued by Jake and Elwood, the cops who arrived on Trigger and Scout. Or maybe they rode one of those Blues Brothers cars.
If I had died on that day, or even in the most recent accident, there’s a good chance I wouldn’t be writing this today.
One thing I always wondered: the young women wore those old, one-piece competitive swim suits that don’t hide anything. And while they were very attractive and nice, they didn’t shave their armpits. Maybe they were Europeans. Course I don’t shave mine either and I’m not European. Not pretty, though, either. And I seldom wear one of those bare-it-all swimsuits, except that one year when SI asked me to, but that turned out to be a practical joke orchestrated by Dan Jenkins.
Oh yeah, before I put that story to rest and go back and talk about Alice and the Restaurant, I ought to say I walked beneath the big “W” arch and to Waylon’s house to call the cops. No cell phones back then. Remember, this was 1975 and down here in Tennessee, we still had to have Mabel work the switchboard for our wind-up home phones. Only I think her name was Alice.
But when I needed help, Waylon was up at Johnny Cash’s house, choking down ribs, chitterlings and bourbon and talking to John and June and Bob Dylan, Dr. John the Night Tripper and Lawrence Welk, who legend has it landed a borrowed helicopter on the lawn so the assembled could hear his “champagne music” tales of honky-tonk desolation and broken hearts.
Since Waylon was gone and I didn’t think Shooter was born yet, I had to walk across the street, and Johnny Rodriguez’s maid let me into his house to make my police call. Too bad his career went belly-up and he moved back to Texas. If he’d stayed here he may not have ever been accused and acquitted in that killing of that Bosco guy he mistook for a burglar but which I always took for a chocolate flavoring you put in milk.
They say “in Jersey anything’s legal as long as you don’t get caught,” but I’ve been told by one of the Lone Star State’s most respected journalists that down in that savage land it’s OK to use firearms as frequently as possible. After all Texas is pretty much outlaw territory run by illegal war profiteers and oil barons. The only thing that makes it a worthwhile place to visit is the savory flavor of the roadkill when served up on tortillas. Dead from Armadillo World Headquarters.
OK, well that’s enough on that. There was no gunplay involved in either wreck.
Accidents are accidental. Otherwise they’d be assault.
The other driver in the most recent adventure told my wife “your husband was dazed after the crash” because my head was slammed into the window by the impact. My wife bit her tongue.
Which brings me back to universal health care and the fact that I am helping The Big O and the Lone Ranger in our effort to take the nation away from the hate-spewing followers of that fat punk radio prophet they all so enjoy.
And, due to the series of unfortunate occurrences, I begin to sense that those pompous guys who want “to get our nation back” are applauding, hoping that I’ll check myself in to the local saloon or at least to the place they used to call the Insane Asylum in Hopkinsville, Ky.
I suppose it wouldn’t be that bad. My pal Lonnie lives in the subdivision tucked just beneath that complex. He’s a good guy with a lovely wife named Cricket and some dogs. He also saw the Little Green Men who landed in the crossroads of Kelly, outside Hopkinsville, 50-some years ago. I wrote about that before. It’s one of those much-studied alien encounters that have experts debating if it was true or just something misunderstood by the locals who saw the spacecraft and the Little Green Men.
Some thought they were monkeys who had escaped from a traveling carnival. Lonnie still shakes that logic off with the simple statement: “Monkeys don’t wear silver suits.”
That is a gentle truth offering me solace in this summer of discontent and disaster.

Queen Father, pigeon blasting, "The Big Bam" -- in everyone's life there's a Summer of 2010

Bam!
In everyone’s life there’s a summer of 2010. Other people may call it the Big Bang theory. I don’t want to call it the Big Bam theory, because “The Big Bam” is what his contemporaries called George Herman Ruth. The Babe crap was made up by journalists. There used to be journalists, you know. I was one of them. Then we all were sent into exile or assassinated. I’m not sure what happened to me.
I didn’t know The Big Bam, but I have eaten hot dogs and played ball. Only my finest play came back in the winter of 1983, when I took a long and high snowball, deep and inside, pitched by Clarksville’s Queen Father, a duly elected official. I blasted it to the far side of Public Square.
It was shortly after that that my best comrade Rob Dollar became police chief of the city of Clarksville. A lot of people don’t know that, because it was hushed up and he was run out of town on a rail because his selection as police chief was brokered by Gen. Colin Powell and the late Dwight David Eisenhower, who thought the son of a military veteran and a man with a degree in law enforcement ought to be the police chief.
Once he was selected, however, the long arm of the establishment came down hard. And perhaps it had a lot to do with the baseball game we had with the Queen Father. If we hadn’t beaten him, if we hadn’t embarrassed him in front of his/her colleagues, perhaps he/she would have given Rob the rightful keys to the big yellow squad car – it really was a brightly painted Volkswagen van with a peace sign on one side and a police sign on the other.
But it wasn’t to be. For one instant, Rob was police chief. Sworn in. He had his little dog at his side. Ma Dollar was proud. We all had a celebration that involved grenade launchers and automatic weapons gunfire throughout what then were the deserted streets of downtown Clarksville. More pigeons than people ventured down there those days. Lots of dead pigeons during that celebration.
By the way, does anybody remember the old tradition that they had in Clarksville and other towns when they’d invite the local shotgun-toting good ol’ boys to come downtown one Saturday afternoon a year, station themselves on a roof and blast away at pigeons?
I remember. When I first began working at the daily newspaper in Clarksville, when it came time for pigeon Saturday, we all were advised to get inside the building early and stay until dusk. Shotgun blasts filled the afternoon. Dead birds and the occasional innocent pedestrian littered the streets the morning after.
Back to the big celebration of Rob’s inauguration. Yes there was wild and festive frivolity in the quadrisexual night clubs throughout the downtown area. The Haberdashery and Strawberry Alley held huge “Village People” spectaculars, where guys dressed as the cop in that group, and sang “YMCA” in observance of Rob’s reputation as being an open and honest man who treats others as he likes to be treated.
That may have been the final straw, because within hours of his inauguration address, he was unemployed and watching spring training reruns on the superstation while my dog, Izzy, found some comfort on his carpet. At least until the flood came and washed him out.
That was a long time ago. But it was a minor flood, which brings me back to the summer of 2010 and the fact that, as far as I’m concerned, it’s not my favorite season. In fact, I can’t stand this year. I want out. As soon as possible.
As for Rob, well he didn’t get much out of his short term as police chief. You’d have to search long and hard in the microfilm to find any record of his tenure. Actually, it was expunged. They told him “You can’t be police chief in this town,” and did their best to break him.
Problem is he’s a News Brother, one of the two most active of the brethren. And he sued the city for $600 and a crate of barbecue pork rinds. He could have won, too, if it hadn’t been for the pork rinds clause. The judge, Roy Oswald Bean, thought Rob was making reference to the friendly coppers, you know “Pork Rinds = Pigs” – which now that I think about it could be the name of my autobiography, although I really will title it “They Call Me Flapjacks” because it is about me or someone who looks and smells a lot like me.
Truth is, Rob just wanted to have an ample supply of the pork rinds because they were the favorite snack of the Vice President of the United States of America at the time: George Herbert Walker “Bocephus” Bush, a decent man who obviously had flawed loins, perhaps because he didn’t get enough pork rinds back when he was the Second Best Secret Agent in the Whole Wide World. Remember that movie? I think the hero killed something like 27 people in the first five minutes. And it was a comedy.
Of course, Papa Bush was in charge of the CIA, which back then was No. 2 to the KGB before they became partners in crime and eventually started filling up suburbs with their agents. I’ll tell you one thing, the agents we deported in the trade for our agents in the Gulag looked pretty damned good. That’s another issue for another day, but why would we trade beautiful women for dumpy old men? For that matter, why would LeBron James crap on his hometown?
As for Cleveland, my pal “Flash” – who has climbed high in the News Brothers ranks thanks to his undying loyalty and the fact he spent Halloween with us – was in Cleveland the other day. He saw all of these people tearing up the streets, screaming about the departure of LeBron for Miami. “Flash,” though a smart guy and a devout disciple of the late George Bernard Shaw as well as George Gershwin and Yoda and that bald guy in Lost, had no idea who LeBron was. All he told the guy at the Shell station was that “I’d like to go to Miami, too.”
They beat him within an ounce of his life with the handle of the gas pump, before his wife Brenda, who I helped raise when she was a young and beautiful Army brat whose dad and mom were wonderful people, rescued him. She tried to light her hair-spray to fight off the crowd as they gathered to stomp Flash. She’d seen it in a movie. But the Flash family is “green” and they have no aerosol products in their luggage. So that didn’t work. Anyway, she got them to leave Flashy boy alone when she said “my dad is Jimmy Brown.” Hard to believe, but it may be true as there is absolutely no resemblance.
OK, so we’ve all been having hard times lately, what with LeBron showing that he’s got the same kind of class that a nameless and classless “newspaperman” displayed when he turned his back on Rob and eliminated all mention of his brief reign as police chief.
But what about the Big Bang, you say. I’ve been teasing about this lately. Simply put, I got my brains over easy on the Fourth of July.
Suffice it to say that a car ran into my car and it was totaled. This comes on top of the flood of a couple of months ago and, much worse, the death of Pal Kitty, who was my best and least judgmental friend.
I’m waiting to see if I can get another car sometime. But I’m lucky, because at least I don’t have a job to call in sick to.
For that I thank the most recent Presidents of the United States of America and their sponsors: the insurance, banking, oil and media industries.
OK, now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, I guess, as Ricky once said to me when he caught me and Fred Mertz eating all of the chocolates that came off the assembly line: “Flapjacks, you got some ‘splainin’ to do.”
Accidents are accidental. That’s why they call them accidents.
So I’ll just let it go like that and wait for football season and remember that in everyone’s life there’s a summer of 2010.

Lone Ranger, "Death" Dollar, Trooper Rudy, "BAM" & the nice, old patriot in my basement

While Nashville’s finest rode horsies downtown, corralling drunks and enforcing the infamous “no-spitting nor passing gas ordinance,” I celebrated the Fourth of July in the middle of a road. “BAM!” as my old friend and running mate, Emeril, would say, wiping Cheetohs crumbs off his face.
Hooray for the red, white and blue indeed.
Speaking of which, some of the more conservative members of this loose-knit association I like to refer to as “humankind” (though KIND may not exactly fit) like to question my patriotism.
It has something to do with my ability, at a whim, to recite some of the draft board scene from Alice’s Restaurant Massacree.
"Shrink, I want to kill.…. I wanna see blood and gore and guts and veins in my teeth. Eat dead burnt bodies. … And the sergeant came over, pinned a medal on me, sent me down the hall, said, "You're our boy."
And some have questioned me because I support the Big O in his efforts for universal health care…. I offer this whole-hearted support for two reasons: The Big O beat me in a game of CRIBBAGE (no we didn’t play the card-and-board came, we just spelled it out in a basketball shooting contest) in which my support for his health care reform was at stake. Speaking of steak, he also earned one, char-broiled and bloody, because – he jokes (?) that’s how he’d like to see Osama Bin Laden.
Course no one will ever find Osama, because he’s operating one of those milk-bottle-toss games on carnival midways throughout the Midwest. People are strange. No one ever looks in the faces of carnies, you know. It’s the perfect disguise. My friend Captain Kirk was not a war hero, but he was a pool shark and a carny. He air-brushed images of The Village People, WHAM! and the like on T-shirts on the midways for 35 years before he decided perhaps it wasn’t his road to fortune. Now he’s a very spiritual telephone sharecropper in Des Moines. Bless him.
Back to my support of health care reform: I actually believe in it. And that is in addition to the support earned while playing basketball with the Big O. Did I ever mention that when he hits a really outrageous shot, he likes me and my pal Tom Petty to break into a rendition of “Hail to the Chief?” It’s pretty humiliating. And discordant.
But I do support the health reform efforts and it draws the ire of some so-called patriots, who lament that “huddled masses” thing on the big old statue in New York. I believe these “patriots” are the cracks in the Liberty Bell.
I should mention, though that they have said that I -- along with colleague Rob “Death” Dollar, and others who forged a personal friendship with the Lone Ranger -- have aided in the Big O’s successful efforts to take the nation away (albeit briefly) from the scourge who formulate political opinions by mimicking talk radio’s various cretins.
These anti-patriotic patriots plan to reclaim “our country” from friends of the Lone Ranger like me, Rob (a respected member of the federal government and, by some accounts, a secret agent in the service of Her Majesty) and Scott “Badger” Shelton. By the way, Rob and I both are Kentucky Colonels, although I believe he likes fried chicken in greasy tubs better than I do. Give me deep-fat-fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches every day, eh? That’s what happened, didn’t it Elvis?
While on the subject of the Lone Ranger, I should mention how Trooper Rudy chased me down on a speeding citation while I reached the darkness at the edge of Hoptown after visiting the Lone Ranger.
The spot of my lean and frisk – well, actually I just had to hand him my license and registration, as Trooper Rudy isn’t the kind of guy who enjoys the prurient pleasures of the “lean and frisk,” was just outside Hopkinsville, Ky. The spot where I was stopped by the long arm of Trooper Rudy was not far from where my friends in the Fifth Special Forces Group (Air Assault) have their top-secret clubhouse. The zealots who question my patriotism likely haven’t been guests here, as Rob and I have, frequently roasting marshmallows and listening to true tales of heroism from those who lived it rather than just heard about it on their short-waves in their suburban bonus rooms.
Love the soldiers, hate the war. Give Ireland back to the Irish, I say.
Oh yeah, that’s right, our war is in Afghanistan and the sunny neighboring land of Iraq. Going well, too, I see by the body count and the progress toward peace. Big O, I thought you were going to stop this ridiculous thing? Oh well, no more chocolate pie for you next time you come by unless you get Gen. Dave to get those soldiers out. I mean, what’s it take to end a war? Another Rolling Stone interview?
Back to Trooper Rudy on that cold and lonely stretch of highway. He said “Kid, do you know you can’t drive like this in Christian County, Kentucky?”
I told him I thought I could. And I also said I wasn’t speeding, a conviction that took me a few days later to court in Hoptown, where I proclaimed my innocence while (borrowing some from Arlo Guthrie and Alice here) a shackled group of all kinds of mean, nasty ugly-looking people sat on the benches, looking on. Mother rapers. Father stabbers. Father rapers! Father rapers sitting right there on the bench next to me! And they was mean and nasty and ugly and horrible crime-type guys sitting.
And the judge looked past the meanest, ugliest one and looked me square in my red, white and blue eyes and said “kid, what’d you do?”
At which point I eloquently paced the courtroom, laying out my Lone Ranger defense. I told him how I had gone to Hopkinsville to visit the Lone Ranger, Clayton Moore, who took time from his busy schedule to hang out with me and Rob, Badger and with my brother, Eric, who --- while never a News Brother because his Hinduism prohibits him from taking part in our regular slaughter of sacred cows -- finds it hard to get up in the morning without laughing uproariously about me, his brother, or “The Colonel,” as he likes to call me. Of course, he has arthritis in his football knees, so it’s hard for him to get out of bed regardless. But he liked the fact he was there when the Lone Ranger spit on a silver bullet, rubbed it on all of our lips and pledged to become a News Brother.
By the way, Trooper Rudy told me after the hearing that he may have made a mistake. I like that guy. The Lone Ranger would like him, too.
But that’s another story. Let’s get back to the matter at hand: The Fourth of July, another calamity in my life and, of course, patriotism.
Some conservatives think they’ve lost their nation because my tall pal is in the Oval Office. Some even mention that other thing, you know, the one they don’t like to mention for fear of seeming hate-filled or at least bloated and repugnant. Obama is not only from Chicago, but he has CHILDREN.
You know, when Little W from Texas was in the Oval Office, I didn’t think we’d lost our nation. I just thought we’d let Shotgun Dick and his band of robber oil barons and pig-skewering thugs get too much control.
In fact, I even liked Little W’s “Mr. Gorbachev: Tear down this wall.” Hold it, that was my old bud Ron Reagan during a Death Valley Days commercial for 20 Mule-Team Borax.
Little W’s shining moment was when he flew on that jet onto the aircraft carrier and declared “Mission Accomplished,” not because the war was ended, for clearly it rages on nine years later, but because his flight suit remained dry. I probably could not have accomplished that feat. It is something, the only thing actually, for which I offer him due praise.
OK, as for anyone losing our nation, I just occasionally peek out my window, past the goldfinch feeder and I see it’s still there. Where I left it. Heck, the Big O and Tom Petty, Bob Dylan and the late Slim Pickens even played NUKE on the basketball court at the end of my driveway. Sen. Byrd sat on the deck, fiddling with Charlie Daniels.
Of course, my part of the nation almost was washed away thanks to rain and, some say, other freaks of nature, sometimes referred to as “the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.”
Of course they aren’t “real Army,” in that they don’t use machineguns and flesh-burning torches. Instead, they tote pipe wrenches and hand grenades in their brief cases. But these guys can create true havoc. No they aren’t nasty sounding, like the “Night Stalkers” and the top secret “Slit Their Throats and Bleed them Like Pigs” battalion from the late Fort Leonard Wood, but the troops of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are powerful.
The ‘U.S.’ in their name is a dead giveaway as to what’s happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear, but did you know that flood insurance and earthquake insurance, though written and sold by the major “insurance companies’’ really are underwritten by the U.S. government? And is there a difference between the two?
Tell me who’s lost our nation now when the government prospers from insurance premiums for emergency conditions like flood and plague and volcanoes and then they can deny coverage or pay perhaps $500 for the loss of a half-house?
And the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is manning the floodgates with their bathroom plungers, nuclear neckties and those wallet condoms they use to plug holes in the dams and damsels.
No, this wasn’t the Big O’s idea. It predates him. But you know, as my friend John Kay -- and he really is a friend, as I call or e-mail him occasionally in his Canadian lair -- says ”there’s a monster on the loose.”
Hold it. I’m supposed to be talking insurance here.
This last weekend as we finally put our house back together – with the help of the $500 the government gave me for implements of destruction as well as kindly aid from one of the few bosses I liked who still is alive, a few friends and relatives, but mostly by robbing my kids’ education fund – I felt good for about a half-day. My long national nightmare seemed to be about over.
Nah, I’m not Opryland. I didn’t lose millions. I just lost my patience at times. I realize now, thanks to the most recent occurrence, that I am being tested. Perhaps I am some sort of government guinea pig. Perhaps the Big O arranged for all of these calamities to see what it would take me to crack. Maybe it’s just old Shotgun Dick and his vile band of bird blasters.
And then came the “BAM.”
Need a nap. I’ll write again soon.

Old notebook brings back trauma of reporting No. 9's bloody death and visions of a happier ending

“Red roses ….Biohazard”
Three words in bleeding ink scrawled in a reporter’s notebook sent me retreating in horror to the day, almost a year ago, when I roamed from Nashville’s bars to apartments and even a grisly murder scene, alternately asking “Why, Steve?, Why?,” my heart aching while racing on newsman’s adrenaline fix.
Those three words hollered at me after I reached into the back seat of my old Saab the other day. I needed a reporter’s notebook for an interview. Underemployed, I reuse notebooks front to back and back to front. Many date back years. In fact, in the trunk, there’s a “King of the Hill” six-pack holder stuffed with half-used notebooks and some Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters advance CDs to keep me properly despondent if ever waiting for a tow.
Occasionally when I reach for one of the notebooks and look at the contents, they make me smile. I mean, here’s some almost incomprehensible stuff from Brian Wilson in one. Anyone who has ever seen my reporter’s scribble knows it’s almost incomprehensible enough, even if not quoting someone who prefers a sand box to real life.
Of course, I wasn’t made for these times, either. Just ask the corporate journalism types. Hold it … that’s not what they said. It wasn’t that I wasn’t made for these times, it was that I was too old to understand what they knew to be true, that Shaggy was more important than Eddy Arnold to Nashville newspaper readers. Of course, I like Scooby-Doo as much as anyone else. Oh yeah, different Shaggy. At least Afro-Man had an excuse.
Let’s get right to the point in a roundabout way. The other day I was going to meet a studio hand who, among other things, helped coax the last songs out of Marty Robbins, a nice man who could sing like the devil and drive like Richard Petty. Speaking of Petty, many mornings I’ll sing Tom’s songs. I guess they’re not related and Marty sang El Paso.
“Down in the West Texas Town of El Paso, I always got searched by the border police,” I sing. That was when I went with Mule, Denny and I think Capt. Kirk or Wizard or Carpy or all of the above to watch a friend play in the Sun Bowl. We made it to the game, too, no thanks to the frisking of the border guards. I mean, so what if my hair had grown so long it stopped by itself? I neither stunk nor smuggled. My intentions were always honorable, but I always was frisked before finishing my promenade over the muddy ditch filled with naked kids begging for money.
“Mister, Mister, throw it to me,” yelped the youngsters as they jumped into the snake- and body-filled Rio Grande to rescue quarters. Some threw dimes and pennies. Didn’t matter. Heck it only cost a penny to get into Mexico back then. I think it cost a buck and an intimate pat-down to leave.
Well, again that’s a different story. I liked Ciudad Juarez, even if nowadays the drug gangs are gunning down innocent people on the same peaceful streets where I bought my black-velvet painting of Jimi Hendrix for $2. Of course that was 1971, I think. It’s probably worth $4 now and is stored securely with my poster of Dennis Hopper’s fatal “hello” to the rednecks in “Easy Rider.” Perhaps I’ll use them by my coffin instead of graduation pictures, especially if they throw in my black-light Sergeant Pepper poster.
But it was when I reached in my back seat for a notebook, flipping to see if there were any blank pages that I saw “red roses” and “Biohazard,” and was sent, at least for a time, to one of the saddest days of my journalism career.
Those notes were my basic description of what could be seen from the stoop of the apartment where the bodies of Steve McNair, the beloved quarterback, and his girlfriend had been found. The storm door was smudged from the CSI fingerprint guys. It seemed a humble place for an NFL great, a good fellow with a fatal flaw, to have his brains blown out.
I stood there last July 5, less than 24 hours after the bodies had been found. The New York Daily News hired me to be their “man on the ground” while they dispatched their own reporter. A football star murdered by a suicidal lover is good fodder for Big Apple sensationalism.
Some friends of mine from my career in journalism – and I do have friends, despite the rumors – had recommended me to The Daily News.
Now it never had been my dream to be a tabloid, sensational journalist. Course, I had nothing against it, either. Even my old comrade Brad Schmitt, who should have known better, enjoyed a good celebrity sex tale. And while the newspaper honchos looked down their bulbous, busted-vein-punctuated noses at Brad’s stories, they would often promo them on the front page: So and so celebrity found to have bi-sexual, kleptomaniac lover who likes to watch porno while listening to old Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show’s “Sylvia’s Mother” backwards.
Now it was my job to edit Brad. And in the scenario above, which isn’t true but ought to be, my main role was to tell the bosses what we had and they’d jump up and down and disappear into the bathroom for a bit while Brad wrote. (I also edited out his more blatant burp and fart jokes, but that’s only because I had to sit next to him and it was redundant.)
Anyway, I was actually on special assignment for a newspaper in New York, New York. By the way, as much as I love Alicia Keys’ “Empire State of Mind,” it’s a shame it has displaced “New York, New York” as the semi-official song of the Big Apple. Did you notice the horses yawning during the Belmont post parade?
Now, though, back to the story that still, when I think of it, makes my body hurt.
It actually began July 4, 2009, when my friend, Peter Cooper -- a good guy, loyal pal, skilled harmonicat, violinist, trapeze artist and confidante to Jay-Z and Tom T. -- called to tell me McNair had been murdered.
Peter was working the July 4 shift at the paper and his job was to focus on the huge amounts of money wasted by Metro that should be going to the homeless and disadvantaged but instead pays for a fireworks show. Only he was to put a more positive spin on it.
Peter though heard about Steve, and knows I have a passion for the Tennessee Titans that has rubbed off on my kids, Emily and Joe, who loved to watch No. 9 on the field. No. 9. No. 9… Turn me on dead man…. Oops, Beatles in my mental soup again.
Peter, who now is a dad and soon will know how kind his gesture truly was, wanted me to know before my kids found out on TV. He figured I could tell them and save some of the trauma.
Which worked. But my own trauma was just beginning when the next morning The Daily News editor called me to say he’d like to employ me to roam around the city, to the place where the young woman had lived, to the murder scene, to the bars Steve had frequented in his final hours and to call in details as I went along, which would be woven into a story being constructed in New York City (get a rope!).
I was escorted off the premises of the young woman’s apartment complex, but at least they were gentle with me. I once was physically shoved aside by a Klansman and another time by a drunken photographer. Part of the job.
And out at Dave and Buster’s, where she worked, the pretty young women all in a row greeted me with big smiles and “we were told to keep our mouths shut.”
Which took me to the DEATH CONDO, within eyeshot of the stadium where McNair carved his legend with toughness and heart. I climbed the steps to see the “with love” or whatever maudlin message had been attached to the roses. I looked at the Biohazard sign, always left when blood is shed at a crime scene.
I went over to the pool, where residents smoked cigarettes, drank cheap light beer and passed judgment. “We find it concerning that everybody brings their kids over here to show where he was having an affair,” said one woman, nodding as an apparent mom and pop and their kids ended their Sunday afternoon drive by gaping at the fingerprint smudged door.
“He was having an affair with a 20-year-old. It’s disrespectful,” she spat.
Another in her party noted that no one ever saw much activity around the condo, other than the limousines that came up and down the alley during the night. It was almost a “he had it comin’” feeling, which sent me then to a peanuts-on-the-floor cowboy dive on Division, where McNair apparently enjoyed his last beverages before meeting his lover so he could be shot in the head.
No one would comment there, other than to nod that Steve had frequented the place. A couple of drunks, apparently protecting the image of this bar, followed me out the door and stood on the porch of the joint yelling at me as I got back in my car.
At this point, I climbed from the car and walked back to the porch. “You guys want me for something?” I asked. They turned to re-enter the bar. But I followed. “If you fellows need to tell me something, go ahead,” I said to them as they let their faces fall into their suds inside the joint and turned their eyes to Wimbledon or soccer or whatever vile sport was on TV.
I was in a tired and angry mood on that 90-degree day. I’d been exposed to the judgmental and mean. One of my favorite athletes had drowned in a puddle of sleaze. I wanted to be home with my kids watching the Cubs and doing shots of Pepsi Maxx, washing away life’s primer coat of slime.
Instead, I headed for Green Hills, to the lush estate Steve occupied, at least when the spirit moved, with his beautiful wife, Meshell and the two boys.
What I found there never made it in The Daily News, as the deadline was passed. And, it really wasn’t juicy.
You see, what I found was mourning. In fact, I scrawled it out in the notebook so I could dictate verbatim to the desk in New York City if they were interested.
More than 20 vehicles, mostly luxury cars and trucks, were gathered at the McNair residence in Green Hills. About half of those were behind the wrought-iron security fence.
Inside the sprawling brick home, friends and family were making arrangements.
“Just like any family does at a time like this,” said one of the gathered, identifying himself as a friend….
These people were kind and warm to the visitor, me, who really wasn’t looking for sleaze, but was looking to report, at least, on the atmosphere around a family in mourning. Heck, I was mourning, too. And as I stood by the fence, talking with the fellows who dropped back long gulps of Gatorade, I looked across the yard.
A pint-sized Fisher-Price basketball hoop stood next to the garage. I imagined Steve McNair, laughing, doing a little slam-dunking there with his youngest sons, Trenton and Tyler.
I would have preferred telling that story.

Silver-haired, silver-tongued devils as seen through the youthful, bright eyes of Bonnaroo generation

“So how did you get to know Kris Kristofferson?”
The intelligent young woman asked me that question when she was cruising through some pictures of the great songwriter (I really can’t call him a great singer-songwriter…. Because, well … listen to him sing….) But I love the guy. His wife and kids too.
The young woman was putting together a story on Bonnaroo for a student news web site where I serve as sort of “journalist-in-residence.” I like this work and the young people and their ideas and energy.
While we looked at the Bonnaroo story, she had begun to go through the internet files to see what types of pictures were available. Oh there was the big Centeroo with the arch. There were some pseudo-hippies and perhaps some real ones too.
Most of the real ones are dead, you know. Or they’ve gone away to work for Big Oil, Corporate Media and the Insurance Empire. Perhaps they even work for FEMA or are next in line to serve as supreme commander for the illegal war, once Gen. Dave gives his “Rolling Stone” interview.
Oops. There I go again. A fellow I like (despite his politics) wrote a note on Facebook the other day accusing liberals of being non-patriotic, that we’re tearing down all that this nation stands for. Glad the conservatives have come down so hard on their pals in Big Oil, Shotgun Dick and the like.
Conservatives, with the Big O’s help (it pains me to say), have done a great job to my favorite place in my limited exposure to Earth. Oh, I guess I like Bermuda better. And the Mayan ruins in Central Mexico were cool too. Yeah, and I got my kids in Romania. Spent a lot of time there. Great country. Also Switzerland. And the Netherlands. And Canada…. But you know, I’m pretty simple in a complicated way. I love the Redneck Riviera, where I’ve been told by Anderson Cooper that Big Oil coats the sand, and shrimp-boat captains are killing themselves.
Talk about ruining America and tearing us apart?
Ah, get off the soapbox, old man.
Yeah, that’s where I was going. Will get there eventually. Castles made of sand melt in the sea eventually. Perhaps not so much now that they are caked with oil.
OK, back to the time spent with the very nice and intelligent young woman. She was going through the pictures from Bonnaroo, to illustrate a good story another student had written.
That’s when she stopped on the picture of Kris…. And she laughed. “Look at Kris Kristofferson,” she said.
I said “He’s a friend of mine.”
She surveyed my appearance and it was obvious she could see why I might be a friend of this long-in-the-tooth, weathered man of words. I’m kind of that way, although not as long of tooth yet. I hope to make it that far. No one is paying me so much for my words these days, which is why I’m casting them out here for free in hopes for a sitcom based on my days with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and their liberation of Alberta from the crazed gypsy mongrels. Or whatever those kinds of dogs were.
Then this young woman said, “How in the world did that happen?” or something like that. Here I am sitting in this little newsroom talking to a bright and talented young student … and I know Kris Kristofferson ….personally?
Gotta admit that at the very first, I thought that this was gonna be one of those moments where I could talk about hanging out with Kristofferson. About how Tom T. Hall once told the crowd at the Hall of Fame how I was a great writer. Perhaps I could throw in my friendship with Mac Wiseman and how Louise Scruggs once took the phone away from Earl so she could assure me she was going to get Bob Dylan to call me. "If anyone can get you Dylan,I can," said Louise, a great and stubborn woman. I occasionally have been known to call Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. And I knew Ginsberg and Groucho a little.
I thought I could tell this young student how I once had a good conversation with Bill Wyman of The Rolling Stones and how that band’s music director, Chuck Leavell, invited me backstage for a visit the last time those boys were in town. He remains a friend of sorts.
I was gonna tell her about how I interviewed Brian Wilson and how I spent an afternoon walking a golf course with Alice Cooper.
I was going to tell her how John Kay from Steppenwolf remains a friend and we correspond after I was the only one he ever allowed to interview him in depth during his 16 years of residency in the Nashville area. He lives outside Vancouver now.
Then perhaps I could have stepped out of music and told her how I know Muhammad Ali, have spent a few hours casually hanging out with him and also interviewed him several other times.
Knew O.J. pretty well, too, though I seldom brag about that. “To my pal, Tim, Peace and Love, O.J.” says the autograph on the picture he gave me when he took me to lunch at Austin's, a restaurant in downtown Clarksville. I don’t think the Juice lived up to his peace and love mantra. You know he’s not really a nice guy, even if he did win the Heisman and buy a nice Bronco.
Wilma Rudolph was the cousin of an old friend of mine, Ol’ Steve Pettus, who ran a barbecue stand outside Clarksville. I used to spend nights barbecuing shoulders with Steve and his brother, Euless. I regularly was invited to the massive Pettus family reunions. I was treated as family. Wilma was a beautiful and graceful woman.
Oh yeah, I could have then gone on to talk about my two interviews with Ringo Starr and how Tom Petty once wrote me a personal note telling me how much he liked my Facebook mugshot. “Mr. Ghianni, nice picture,” he said, likely coughing and reaching for a bag of chips, salty and chocolate and a quart of Cherry Garcia ice cream.
Oh yeah, Eddy Arnold was my friend. So is George Jones. I knew Carl Perkins. Scotty Moore is one of my favorite people. Duane Eddy kind of likes me. Then there’s Foster & Lloyd, good fellows both.
Johnny Cash liked me. Perhaps I’d tell this student how I was supposed to interview him ---he had agreed to have me come out to his house after "I get back from the Coast." Instead he went in the hospital and died, so I covered the funeral instead with my much younger old man pal, Peter Cooper, a fine musician of limited acclaim.
Ahh, but this young student wanted to know about Kristofferson. So, I took to describing the great series of events, from a telephone interview to a meeting at the Americana Music Awards to conversations at June and Johnny’s funerals to, well, a special afternoon when Kris and his son Johnny Cash Kristofferson wandered with me down Music City Row. Johnny shot video. I’ve got that in my closet. The three of us roamed the wild streets of Nashville on foot and also in a minivan. You ever try to carry on a conversation with a personal-hero-turned-friend when you are driving a minivan around a statue of nude people? Don’t look, Ethel…
It was Kris’ first daytime visit to the Row in 30 years and his first sober visit in probably much longer.
Anyway, as I told the young woman the Kristofferson story -- warming up for a longer trip down memory lane, perhaps even stopping to recall the time my pal, Rob Dollar, and I, along with some News Brothers comrades, joked around with John Glenn and terrified the Secret Service -- I noticed she began flipping quickly ahead to other images.
Dave Matthews, Conan, Jack Black, Regina Spektor, Dr. Dog … I’m a fan of many of them. I particularly like Spektor. Matthews bores me. But Conan did a fair “Tonight Show” impersonation there for awhile. Funny guy. I still prefer Letterman. In fact, the king of late night remains Johnny Carson, whose last TV appearance was to resounding applause at the Letterman show.
I saw Carson’s show one sweaty afternoon in Burbank back in 1973. Slept on the sidewalk to get tickets. David Carradine was there, riding high on his Kung Fu fame and long before he was found dead in a hotel closet in some remote land. And Buddy Hackett was there. Outside, when the show was over, I found Tommy Newsome parked near me by the Orange Julius stand. You may not remember Tommy. He was the trombonist in the Tonight Show Band who sometimes took over as bandleader for Doc. Oh yeah, I know Doc, too. Nice, unassuming man.
Ah, but I digress again. Back to the young woman in the newsroom with her pick of pretty pictures of young artists.
I realized then that she probably wouldn’t be that interested in hearing me tell those stories. Probably had better things to do. You know, classes and stuff like that. Gotta get that Gypsyphonic Disko image and post it. Actually, I think she went with a crowd shot. Just as well.
Good, smart young woman.
Likely to be a successful journalist or successful at whatever she tries in life.
And, I have to admit, there was a difference between the images she was dwelling on and the image of Kris.
I mean, Kris looked … old….
Then it hit me.
I’m old too. In fact, this first hit me for sure when someone, my wife or someone else of equally innocent and diabolic intent, started telling me and everyone else who would listen that I was almost 60, rather than 58 or "in his 50s."
“Your dad is almost 60 years old, Joe. I think he can tie his own shoes.”
OK. Usually I can, by the way.
I suppose Kristofferson gets that sort of stuff around his house, too. Oh well, I'll only live 'til I die.

It was hot... Boy was it hot

Me 'n' old Skipper sat on a bench. It was hot.... Boy was it hot.
A long time ago I wrote the lead -- or something very similar –- on a newspaper column that helped launch a journalism revolution. It was a prime moment in the birth of the News Brothers.
Yeah, I know. Unfortunately the revolution – with its purpose to put out good newspapers, have fun and take pride in serving a community (because the pay was virtually nothing) – was pretty much squashed by the corporate mindset. What’s that mindset? Well, I guess to define what the corporate mindset is, you just drive to the Gulf of Mexico and look at the tar balls, the oil-reddened water, take a deep whiff of the burning oil and look at the dead pelicans and dolphins.
It is a world that is dominated by the likes of Shotgun Dick, that fat radio blowhard, big insurance, fruitless wars for oil and foreign countries who own the monetary system of the land of the free and the home of the brave. What’s happened to our country? Let’s get our pride back. Maybe find a more perfect union where generals don’t take their shots at the commander-in-chief in “Rolling Stone.” Heck, that magazine used to feature John Lennon and the Grateful Dead. Now it’s Miley, Joe Jonas, "Lost" and some four-star general puffing up his ego by back-stabbing the President of the United States of America. Talk about your corporate mentality. It’s in the Army now. As a reporter, of course I would have written that story if the general had the immense ego and lack of manners to tell it. What has happened to common courtesy? Is the Army going to be in charge? Well, if so, just remember the scene in "Dr. Strangelove" when Slim Pickens goes for his nuclear bomb rodeo ride.
Oh, the Big O is far from perfect, but he deserves to have his generals complain in the privacy of the Oval Office over glasses of Ovaltine and plates of oil-drenched Gulf shrimp.
Another story, another night. The News Brothers were the kinds who would have confronted their boss face-to-face. In fact, I had to on more than one occasion visit the publisher. And I survived, even earned extra respect. Back then it was OK to stand up to bosses to their faces. And they responded in kind: Face to face. Backs were for patting or for scratching. Elvis: What happened to our country?
Now the News Brothers story will be told one day soon. Not in this forum. Parts of the story are to be found on You Tube, where my co-conspirator Rob “Death” Dollar has several videos posted. Some of these are at the bottom of this page or at the THE NEWS BROTHERS page on Facebook.
The Skipper mentioned at the top of this little foray was an old salt, a stretcher of the truth, a man with a heart of gold, both a mentor to and a believer in the News Brothers. He was short of education and grace, gnarled with arthritis and simply brilliant. He told us stories of Al Capone, of Pearl Harbor, of carny sideshows and being on a ship that was shot out from beneath him in the North Atlantic.
True? Didn’t matter. I loved Skipper … whose real name was Okey Stepp. Old friends called him “Red,” for the hair he once had. We just treated him as one of us.
I thought of this today because my friend, Rob, sent me a note commenting on this 100-degreee weather. "It was HOT today. Boy was it HOT. And I wasn't even sitting on a bench," he wrote, an acknowledgement of that one special, very hot day when I went out to do a column about the effects of the horrid weather on Clarksville and made it only as far as the bench in front of the Royal York Hotel.
Back then, and we’re talking three decades back, the old hotel – once a luxury joint where movie stars stayed – was something Roger Miller might have been thinking about when he wrote that “rooms to rent 50 cents” line in “King of the Road.”
“Fireproof” read the neon sign on the hotel window. The rooms inside, even the perches that held the thin mattresses, were made of concrete and tile. It’s been refurbished to something resembling luxury in the decades since.
Back then, though it was a home for drifters, down-and-outers, lovable losers, no-account boozers, Skipper and the News Brothers.
Early in our association, Rob and I -- along with other News Brothers and several guys who since have died, others who have backed down and bent over to properly salute corporate journalism and some who just enjoyed a laugh and a smoke with their coffee -– would retreat to the coffee shop at the Royal York Hotel between editions of The Leaf-Chronicle newspaper in Clarksville.
We’d get to work at about 5 a.m., get the first edition done by about 9 or 9:30, go grab an endless cup of coffee from Raissa Gray, the proprietress of the joint and a true News Brothers enthusiast, and then go back to get the second edition and, for awhile, the third or “FINAL” out.
That was back when the newspaper was still aiming for 21,000 circulation. We made it up to 24,000 at the height of the News Brothers reign. Since we all left Clarksville –- I turned the lights out when I was the last News Brother to move on back in 1988 –- I have no idea how circulation has gone. Down, I would guess, like that of the rest of the industry.
I’m not sure. I like the folks up there and wish them well. After all, I spent almost 15 years bleeding for that newspaper in its pre-corporate incarnation. I’ll tell you, I’d rather read a News Brothers newspaper -- with its focus on terrified escaped monkeys, monster catfish, war-ravaged soldiers, civic corruption and hillbilly homicides than the USA Today Jr. that serves as Chamber of Commerce “local journalism” in cities around the nation. Not necessarily addressing Clarksville here, but the whole darned industry.
This isn’t the fault of the workers who do their best to hang onto jobs and work with honor, knowing that the bottom line guillotine soon could rise over their heads. Whack! One more unemployed head rolling out the door doesn't do much to solve the problem.
Oh yeah, we didn’t just have wild news stories back then. We had stories that touched the heart, including my own very real detailing of my friendship with the mother of a football player who was murdered and Rob’s story of a fellow dressed up like Santa Claus who was on his way to a Christmas Eve party when he noticed a house on fire.
Without a single “ho” –- hey stop it, I’m talking about the famous “ho-ho-ho” that Santa’s known for, not the angels of the night -- he ran into the house and rescued the occupant. And then, faster than you can say “Rudolph’s got a brand new bag,” Santa was off to the party.
Tell me you wouldn’t buy those newspapers?
Oh yeah, and to toot my own horn, I also wrote a column three days a week that told more stories of real people. The premise was that we all are more alike than different, that we share the same hopes, dreams and ambitions and fears, even if we weren't in the proper advertising demographic.
I would wander the streets and just start conversations. If it was Christmastime, perhaps I’d frame the story in holiday detail. Floods on the Cumberland? Go find a person who has lived there forever and who can tell of high waters past. World Series time? Find one of the former Negro Leagues stars who lived in the city. Enjoy lemonade and conversation. And share their stories with our readers.
Which brings me back to the very hot day when I wandered out the side of the Leaf-Chronicle building onto Third and walked the block down to the Royal York. I needed a column about the heat and I think I’d already visited the local ice company.
I saw Skipper in the lobby of the hotel. I can't remember all the details now. He probably was watching “Bonanza” reruns, I bought him a cup of coffee to go, and we went outside and sat on the bench. And we talked about the weather, the war, women, newspapers … I can’t remember now. I can’t find the column now that I’m still surrounded by piles of books and music and paraphernalia of my journalism career while contractors try to reclaim my downstairs space from the flood damage, little thanks to insurance companies or FEMA.
I told Rob tonight that if he has a copy of that column, I’d love to see it soon.
You see, today, since my car has been displaced from the garage by our furniture while the rec room, my office and the laundry room are being healed, I decided that it had been taking too much sun. It needed to be polished. It’s an old car and did not have one of those new-fangled laminated finishes. You actually have to wax it a few times a year.
So I took it to one of those self-wash joints, over in Melrose, and washed and rinsed it and then applied a light wax. It took about 45 minutes, and even though the work was in the shade, I sweated through my Butler Final Four T-shirt (a gift from “Flash” News Brother, a professor at that storied Cinderella university. He has short hair, but he’s a great guy with a swell wife I've known since she was in sixth-grade or so).
On the way back to my house, I swigged greedily from a Pepsi Maxx 20-ouncer and hoped that soon the air-conditioning would overcome the stifling heat in the 26-year-old car.
Yep, me and my old Saab, we rolled back to Crieve Hall. Boy was it hot.
When I came upstairs, there was the message from Rob, adapting the old Skipper lead to comment on the weather today up in his home state of Kentucky, where he serves as a secret agent and government head-counter, all the while maintaining his sense of wonder and humor. I often send him a note to ask “Why?” when things happen in life. Neither of us has the answer. "Why not?," I guess.
So this evening I’ve been thinking about that day on the bench with Skipper. It’s nasty out today and it looks like it’s going to be with us, as Jay-Z might say: “for a spell.”
I wrung the sweat from my Butler T-shirt, put on my Team Italia shirt (it is World Cup time, though I could care less about soccer) and I sat down at the keyboard.
Thanks to Rob, I had a great memory of an afternoon spent drinking coffee in the burning heat on a bench in downtown Clarksville.
Me 'n' old Skipper sat on a bench. It was hot.... Boy was it hot.

Memories of Toad, Lizard King, sum-sum-summertime, Capt. Kirk, Blue Cheer & the Mighty Quinn

Started an interesting, to me, discussion the other day on Facebook when I just tossed out a favorite summer song. Wanted to see what people said in response.
I wrote the following in my status: All-time favorite summer song? How about Cream's 'Toad' played full-blast, echoing off the surrounding buildings.... Just thinking. Not sure yet....
I landed on “Toad” because of some time going through my memories lately, at least in part due to reconnecting with Capt. Kirk, Terry Kirkwood, an old college chum who served in the Navy. He was the guy Ho Chi Minh pointed out as a reason it was necessary to get all of the Americans out of the former South Vietnam. I mean, Capt. Kirk was no intergalactic warrior. He was just a pool-playing swabbie whose claim to fame was that he entertained the deck mates up and down the Delta by singing Tom T. Hall’s “It Sure Can Get Cold In Des Moines": The Iowa weather was 13 below/I had come to Des Moines for a radio show/I awoke in the evening from a traveler's sleep/With notions of something to eat/The old elevator slid down past the floors/My head and my eyes said "You should have slept more."/The man at the desk said the restaurant was closed/Outside it was 14 below….
Of course, if I am indeed telling the truth above, Capt. Kirk, a proud native of Des Moines, where he now works as something of a telephone sharecropper and reformed carnival sideshow airbrush T-shirt artist (his life’s ambition, it turns out), was singing that wintry song of his hometown because it was always hot in Vietnam.
So that’s not a summer song, of course. But my e-conversations with the Captain, who was a faithful sidekick and pal during the time Ames, Iowa was my turf -- I know, who would want Ames other than me? But I loved it there. It was where I met Groucho Marx, that Ginsberg poet guy, my Uncle Moose, and, yep, the boys from Sha-Na-Na. And the late Dennis Wilson before he was the late Dennis Wilson -- have inspired me to remember those days and nights among the tornados, cornfields and pig barns.
And that’s where this summer song conversation began. Because during that time in my life, I lived in high-rise dormitories on the campus of Iowa State University.
As on any campus, the greatest times are in the spring, when the taste of summer arrives and music pounds from every available window, floor speaker and ‘65 Falcon. After an Iowa winter (see Tom T.’s song above – I love that guy, by the way. His wife, Miss Dixie, too.), it’s great to feel anything resembling summer heat and perhaps feel some summer beat ricocheting off the high rises while throwing Frisbees over the rows of sunbathing coeds.
And those are the greatest memories I have of “Toad,” because it is Cream at its finest, particularly Ginger Baker at his best. His work opened the doors for a lot of rock drummers to go ahead and take the forefront. Good or bad, a lot of drum solos have come from that wondrous 13-minute version of “Toad” that’s found of “Wheels of Fire.” It earlier had appeared on “Fresh Cream” and was a staple in concert.
Now I’ve seen Cream. But I probably felt Cream the best on spring days in Ames, Iowa, when, without a doubt, the live version of Toad would pound from someone’s speakers and shake the air from Larch Hall to the power plant.
Perhaps it’s not my all-time favorite summer song. But I do know that every spring I do dig it out and play it. Loud. Try it sometime.
By the way, years ago, I had my vinyl version of “Wheels of Fire” stolen. If someone out there has a copy of it with my name on it, I’d welcome its return, no questions asked. Also lost “Bitches Brew” and a couple of Zappa albums.
Here are some of the responses I got to my posting about songs that bring back summer memories:
Father Laird MacGregor, Episcopal priest of the manly Pressed Rat and Warthog order: “Ridin’ in My Car” by NRBQ. But then he rethought some and came up with entire "Pet Sounds" album by the Beach Boys. “Conjures memories of one summer in particular," he writes. Perhaps it was the summer he opted to cut his long hair, shave his head, enter the priesthood and give up his favorite breakfast of licorice-flavored Schnapps and Wheaties.
The good padre, rector to the famous News Brothers band of journalists co-founded by this author, then adds “Nobody has mentioned Mungo Jerry.”
So, with that in mind, I figured I’d dredge up that old Mungo tune: In the summertime when the weather's high, /you can stretch right up and touch the sky,/when the weather's fine,/you got women, you got women on your mind./Have a drink, have a drive,/go out and see what you can find.
Kinda makes you wonder why Mungo Jerry isn’t hailed as a great band in the vein of The Beatles or at least be mentioned in the same line as Canned Heat.
Jim East, an old journalism pal opts for Eddie Cochran’s version of "Summertime Blues.” I personally would go with The Who version from “Live at Leeds.” But Jim’s a stubborn traditionalist in the most sincere way, though perhaps not a Republican. Speaking of that tune, who remembers the version by Blue Cheer? Yep. I see you nodding out there.
Darryl Illmo Prince writes in that he likes an old-reliable that will have you dancing: “Gotta Go With Van The Man … ‘Brown Eyed Girl.’”
Drew White, Blue Oyster Cult’s meatiest fan, weighed in with " ’Gimme Some Lovin' by the Spencer Davis Group. In the car, windows rolled down and the volume turned up to 11. It sounded even better in the old days of AM radio coming out of a single speaker grill on a metal dashboard!” Drew still has that old sound system. It’s on concrete blocks in his front yard. Next to the fridge. Nah, not true. But nice image.
Ray “Da Plane, Boss” Duckworth chose Bob Seger’s “Night Moves.” Must have come from a time before Ray only listened to Jimmy Dickens while sipping coffee and watching for airplanes from his patio.
Bush Bernard seems to be speaking from his musical heritage in the bogs of Louisiana when he says “"Play that Funky Music, White Boy."
Renee Elder says “For me, personally, it's got to be ‘Rikki Don't Lose that Number’ by Steely Dan.” Now I’m not a Dan man, but that’s a pretty nifty little pop tune, although it’s not in my collection for some reason. I’ll not lose sleep over it, though.
Chuck Emery, formerly the honcho of failed Catfish Bay Records, a fine musician and former Chukker’s record store owner on Franklin Street before Clarksville got blown away by the tornado says “Toad or NSU or I Feel Free...or maybe a medley!”
Janice Kay Brewster Staggs says “Love Cream, but think I'd pick a Led Zep song.”
For David Sims it’s "’Blue Sky’ by the Allman Brothers. Greatest kick-back song ever.”
My cousin Michelle Robertson weighs in with another of my own favorites by my old pal John Sebastian: “Hot town, summer in the city, back of my neck.....”
Kathleen Carlson, who obviously wants to take off all her clothes (it’s part of the lyric of this ridiculous and I can’t believe she’s serious choice): "It's getting hot in here” by Nelly. Nelly or Skanky or one of those pop/hop guys were preferred by executives at the morning newspaper to Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson back when I was there. Caused me problems when I was in charge of entertainment coverage, as I really didn’t cooperate. “You can’t be a maverick and not think like me and be a success here,” or something like that I was told. Yet, I found personal success came by playing Cash and Kristofferson stories above Skanky and Nelly or whoever. Oh yeah, Shaggy was the other one. I thought this was Music City? Oh well, thanks for bringing this up, Kathy. Are you OK? Is it getting hot in there?
Rob Simbeck has a couple of haunting melodies on his mind this summer when he submits "Tie: ‘Spooky’ and ‘Time of the Season.’"
And then there’s Reinaldo Garcia, who not only picks the song, he picks the summer and the city: “L.A., 1967, Light My Fire (long version.)”
You know that I would be a liar if I didn’t say I loved that song. Heck, I bought all the vinyl put out by Jim and the boys. I even like The Doors’ “Soft Parade” album, which is the one most don’t like. Course I’m no Lizard King.
In wrapping up this little experiment, I think any song that makes you smile and think of great summers past is a good song.
Actually “Toad” isn’t my favorite summer song. That would really be “A Day in the Life” from that 1967 summer album about that little vaudeville band that was formed in Paul McCartney’s head.
No, it would be “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” because it dominated the AM dial during the one year when I was cleaning out stalls and trimming weeds at a day camp in Chicago.
Or maybe it would be Rick Nelson’s version of “Summertime and the livin’ is easy, fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high” from my true youth.
Nah, I’ll stick with “Toad.” At least as this first day of summer descends on us tomorrow morning.
Later in the day, I may opt for a visit by the Mighty Quinn.
Course I do like that slamming coffin lid at the end of "A Day in the Life."