PORTRAIT OF THE BLOGGER AS AN OLD FART

The temperature has touched and almost touched 60 all week. Refreshing to go to the mailbox without having to put on shoes with grips on the bottoms and a coat and hat. How long has it been since I went out the door to go to the mailbox without acting like WC Fields at the North Pole? Open the door. Somebody throws a bucket of Ivory Snow soap flakes in my face and I say, "Ain't fit fer man ner beast." From that time, the 1920s, the red hot mama herself, the female Al Jolson came to mind today in Selma's from seeing her on the Ed Sullivan Show in the early 1950s when she was a grandmotherly old woman, Sophie Tucker. What a stitch.


At the bar in Selma's, talking with Tim, another one of the regulars in there almost daily, Sophie Tucker came to mind talking about WC Fields just after some kids had left, telling him about a little girl telling Fields in a movie she had 20 dollars in her bank and he tried to take it away from her. Sophie came to mind and I even remembered her name. It was there on the shelf with a picture of her standing in the curve of the grand piano on the Ed Sullivan show, an old woman in glitzy evening gown singing some saucy song only a younger woman should be singing, doing it just right. I said in awe, "I haven't thought of Sophie Tucker in fifty years." He said, "TJ, my parents aren't fifty years old."



These are the kinds f laughs we have at Selma's, whoever it is, whatever we're talking about. Lots of generation gaps between a 1960 hs grad and a 2011 hs grad. When you get down to you either make the grade or you don't, it's the same. But looking at the pop music from Brenda Lee to Lady Gaga and everything between, I have no idea where the young kids in pop culture are coming from. It's too big a world to try to learn at this time of my life when it's an exercise of mind to try to remember anything. Learning is about remembering, so it's useless to even make the attempt. Sometimes I'll look at a high school guy with earrings, dead eyes, hair dyed black sticking out in several directions, tattoos, pierced lower lip, the hip look for how many years (?), lots of black, posing as Mr Latest Thang, and I'm seeing his fashion all the way back to mid 1970s, wondering why he's still doing the Johnny Thunders look. Punk style has been going on 35+ years.



When I see kids like that looking at me funny, I know that their garb is consciously meant to be in-your-face to white-haired people. They get their kicks seeing old people look disgusted when they see them. As far as I know, I don't look at them any different from someone looking like an LL Bean model with the sleeves of his sweater draped over his shoulders and hanging down in front, ordering a triple espresso. It's the same thing to me. Style. We have a lot of style subcultures in America and I get a kick out of seeing them. There is one girl who looks at me like she's waiting to hear what kind of remark I might say about her appearance, like I care. She wears cool tshirts, but has bad hair. Even bad punk. She needs to cut it short with nose-hair scissors and dye it coca-cola truck red, but her mother would kill her. I asked her what her tshirt said one day, knowing it was the name of a band I'd never heard of, but I couldn't read it without gaping like I was drooling over her boobs. She said, "It's a band." I'm thinking: like, duh. I asked, "What's the name of the band?" She told me and that was that. Of course, you've never heard of them, they're new. Where have you been?



The cult of the new. The entire 20th century of art and style has all been about the new, the latest, the now. It's hilarious to me that I've lived these 68 years in the cult of the new, driven by it, just like everyone around me, and get taken by a 17 yr old for not knowing about the new, because the new is so dazzlingly new to her. It's not for me to pop her bubble and tell her that her style is a bit retro, quite a bit retro. It's as old as her parents. It's not for me to even have an opinion about it. It's her style statement, like my long sleeved shirt that doubles as a light jacket is my style statement. I'm the one with the LL Bean look, though not the polished catalog model look. I'm the faded, wrinkled, frayed look. The "How could that old turd know anything about fashion?" look. He doesn't. Never has.



It's fun going about in the world as an old fart. Nobody thinks they need to impress me, like I wouldn't get it if they attempted. I'm outside the hierarchy of success, not on the ladder, so no one supposes I can be used for influence. I don't command respect. I don't command anything. The only reason anyone would notice me would be if they already knew me. I don't look like anyone you'd want to know. Perhaps that is my style, to look like someone you wouldn't be drawn to know on sight. Just another Joe taking up space. He's never had a face lift and it's starting to sag like wet clay, and he likes that.



I look in the mirror and see a retired country singer burned out. It's the kind of face that's really ugly on tv. Looks like a late-nite used car salesman advertising his own car lot every five minutes during movies like Alien Outlaw, in a polyester plaid suit with bellbottoms. The guy that drives the ratty looking car, whose gut hangs over his belt, always unshaven, and always ready to laugh. Doesn't enjoy knowing a lot of people superficially; prefers to know a few well. Remembers the first time the Rolling Stones were on tv when he was playing bridge in one room with his X-in-laws and the tv was playing in the other room. Could hear it, but couldn't see it. I wasn't "dummy" so I couldn't leave the table. Saw it half a century later on YouTube.



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TALKING TOLSTOY ON A SNOWY DAY

coming down the mountain

the peak, whitehead

fender mountain, whitehead

This morning was one of those days beautiful to behold. A wet snow of maybe an inch in the night stuck to every little twig and branch. The trees were white and black everywhere you looked. The sun came out and made it all the more beautiful. White trees against blue sky. It wasn't long after the sun came out the snow started melting and falling off the twigs, sliding off the roof. The car's hood had about 3 inches of yesterday's two inches and last night's one inch on top of it, plus rain that packed the snow almost solid on the car and froze. First I had to sweep the snow off the ice on the glass, then scrape the ice. It was on there to stay. I left a good bit of the ice on the glass for the sun to melt when it heated the inside of the car. By the time I wanted to go to town around 2, the glass was clear. I took the speed up to 60 on Thompson Flat attempting to dislodge the ice from the hood, but it held firm. I love it when all the snow on the hood rises and crashes to smithereens on the windshield. It's gone as fast as it happens and the wipers clean the glass.

I heard that Dean Fender died yesterday. Hwy 88 in Ashe County, maybe headed toward Jefferson, possibly ice on the road in shaded curves the road graders didn't get, a tractor-trailer hit him head on. Killed him instantly. Heard it took 5 hours to cut the body out of the wreckage. Bad to think about, but a good, quick way to go. No lingering for years with cancer or strapped down in a nursing home begging God to take you. I didn't know Dean but to raise the forefinger from the steering wheel in passing. He was friend to several of my friends. He's had some hard times along his way. He and Jr thought a lot of each other. Everybody I knew of that knew Dean thought a lot of him. He may not have won many piety awards, but when you needed somebody you could count on, Dean would be the one to go to. I mean really count on, like to the detail. He drove an old Chevy pickup for years and years that didn't look so hot, but he kept it running good all the time. He was one of the Whitehead men like Jr was and Welter Hamm still is, who did everything he turned his hand to well, had a good mind and treated everybody right.

Drove to town to take a box to UPS counter at drug store, a good excuse to get into town to go to Selma's for a mocha. Already had morning coffee. I figured a good espresso in milk, chocolate milk with coffee flavor, wouldn't be so rough on the stomach as straight coffee. Selma makes a good mocha. I used to laugh at paying attention to varieties of coffees and things like mochas and lattes. Being in there becomes an education seeing other people order things I'd never heard of and see what they are. Talked with Joe at length. We talked of Tolstoy, his life, his writing. There I sat in Sparta talking with somebody about books, about reading. It was as foreign an experience as the time a woman said to me at Deborah Sherrill's apple cider party last summer, "What are you reading?" It comes by remarkable surprise. For so many years I longed to have somebody to talk about reading experiences with. Had a friend who read, but he played one-upmanship all the time and wasn't any fun to talk with. I reached a place where I didn't care anymore and now it happens. A saying comes to mind, you get what you want after you stop wanting it.

It was fun talking with Joe about good writing. He was an English major at I think he said, Marshall College, Huntington, West Virginia. Fundamentalist childhood. It turns out when we fall into conversation, it's interesting. Being of the mountains, he's not one to run his mouth, or like they say of a dog, bark to hear his head roar. Easy to talk with because he's not talking to fill the void of silence. Like somebody of these mountains, he's comfortable with the silence. One of the regulars at Selma's I'm getting to know as new people in my life. This the beginning of a new 7-year cycle that started last year. Gradually seeing the cycle's nature. I believe this one has to do with some of these people at Selma's and the Front Porch Gallery people on Friday nights. Last cycle was involved in distributing mountain music via store and radio show. This cycle appears to have to do with making videos of the music, writing about the music, painting musicians and writing this blog every day. Not certain I'll make it through the cycle, but that doesn't matter. Maybe this is the last 7 year cycle. It will be fun to observe it as such.

Seeing in the later years that my life has come to find its meaning in the distribution of mountain music, getting it into people's music collections, people who wanted it and couldn't find it, playing it on the radio to the people who wanted to hear it, now videos on YouTube. It feels good to see I've dedicated myself to something worth pursuing. I've never made a penny at it. Have done all of it at my own expense. The store was nothing but a major expense, but I regarded it buying the opportunity to make this music available to the people that want it. I bought my own cds. I didn't care about the money. The radio station didn't pay anything. I didn't want anything. I'm of the belief that an awful lot of people around us are tremendously talented in a lot of ways. My psychological makeup believes money takes something real and makes it into something unreal. Don't know where that came from, but it's been with me all along. Never could find a way to be comfortable dealing with money. Possibly all the years of preaching that penetrated my skull, whether I listened or not, had something to do with it. Not complaining. I don't like to think about money, have seen it do too many really weird things to people who value it.

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