Today, my dog had to go to the vet. She got preseribed pain medicine and how she can barely walk. Her age is showing and it hurts to be alone right now, I will come back to a place that has helped me many times before and talk about the music.
Today, songs that Jimmy Buffett has covered when my dad mentioned that he had covered some Grateful Dead songs that had surprised him.
My father was a big Jimmy Buffet fan, growing up, I can’t say I knew much music that was not Jimmy Buffet from him or 90s country from my grandparents, well then and older. My grandmother loved Eddie Arnold. When I knew one of his songs, I had no idea why.
My dad explained that Jimmy Buffett’s version is skewed about his daughter at least in the first verse.
Through coincidence, I now own an album that has Eddie Arnold’s version on it – It would be lying if I said I don’t have a set of records with some songs I play that tear me apart. I realize, it’s really not true but I wish we had records.
I believe Patsy Cline’s version may be the original – either way, I have now pulled at my own heart strings so I will continue to post those random add songs from my record collection that I play to loud and feel too hard to.
When I was about twelve years old, I went on a road trip with my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins to Bybee, Tennessee. We all road in a caravan of suburbans pulling travel trailers through The Smokey Mountains. None of us had any idea that it would be our last big vacation but my grandfather, the leader of the pack, passed away about 3 years later and our family was never really the same after that but that’s not the point of this story today. We spoke on CB radios between the cars as this was many years before I had seen anyone freely use a cell phone without worrying about minutes if they happened to have one for work.
We had made it to ‘Aunt Joan’s’ house though – she was our great-aunt. That summer we explored freezing cold rivers that came from mountain run off, found some poison ivy, explored the tobacco far and climbed all through the loft in their barn. Somewhere around my house there is still a red-haired vintage G.I Joe that we found up there. I went to church with my dad’s cousin and though I knew that something was very different, I didn’t know what it was – but it seemed like something from a movie. He had taken me to a Southern Baptist Church and it was as authentic as it gets. I just observed and tried not to laugh but I had never seen such a thing and when you added their accents in, it felt like I was living s life of satire. It wasn’t until a few years ago when I told my dad about the time I went to church with his cousin, Jimmy, and what it was like and how confused I was as a twelve year old. He laughed and said, “Oh yeah, they are the real Southern Baptists from the bible belt – we don’t even have anything like that around here.” I might as well be in the movie Sweet Home Alabama.
The point of all this writing is to tell the world or at least my future self that it was about then that I had my biggest accomplishment in my dad’s eyes – I out-shot his brother-in-law in front of the whole family. That may be the only reason that he was able to over look the gay thing – because that wasn’t easy for him, BUT this is how that happened and there is a slight advantage that most shooters should recognize but I will let people figure that one out on their own.
There we were, innocently shooting at paper targets and then my uncle wanted to show off. I am not the one to challenge anyone to anything, so there is no way that it was my idea. He chose the guns, which were just pellet guns but he handed me the rifle and he took the handgun. We set the rules and made a bet. I don’t know how many shows each we took but I know that if my dad had any control of it, he still has that paper target.
The bet was, if he was able to shoot closer to the bulls eye out of however many shots then I would have to get him a beer whenever he wanted one for the rest of the trip. If I was the better shot (with the guns we were assigned) then he would have to get me sodas the whole trip. Well if you can’t see it coming that I won, then I should just stop here – but I did and I sure asked for sodas at all of the opportune times simply because even at twelve, I felt the societal constrains on my life and it was the funniest thing to everyone to watch this twelve year old girl boss around her uncle when really he wanted someone to go get his beers and his son wouldn’t and he knew better than to just ask – my grandma would have never stood for that.
Make The World Go Away
What’s He Doing In My World
And for some reason, this song might always make me think about that day that my sister approached such a difficult situation so well – and I told her that she was wrong and she didn’t know what she was talking about – only to be completely wrong and slightly embarrassed.
