AN HONORABLE ROGUE

 

van gogh

A reminder came today that I do not always function by reason. I'm glad of it. The only person I know who lives as much by reason as possible talks like a robot. Always, everything he says is right, a matter of fact. The bland, non-emphatic voice that is always right. My reaction: Lord have mercy, may I go on flexing my emotional self, getting mad when it's the irrational thing to do, finding my joy feeding carrots to donkeys, doing nothing and feeling no guilt. In this time of the life I feel uncomfortable around men so clean shaven they look diseased and women so perfectly attired and coiffured they look like politicians' wives on tv. They strike me as people who bought the television package. On days the local arts group has their "gallery crawls" where people drive from one studio to another around the county to see the latest in crafty items, have wine and talk, the cars going down my road on their way to Allan and Gary's stained glass studio are all new cars. Every one that goes by, I think, Not anybody coming to see me. My friends all drive used cars and pickups. The only time used cars go by anymore is when a house is being built up the road, having renovations done or additions put on. A new car stops and parks beside the road. They're going to the waterfalls. A used car or pickup stops and parks by the road, it's somebody I know. My friend of years gone by walked into my mind, Lorne Campbell, lawyer. He was generally disliked by the town people and just as generally loved by the country people. A reflection of his attitudes toward town people and country people. Nobody from Whitetop Mountain, Virginia, ever paid in his office. They were the people he loved as his own.

vincent van gogh

 

Lorne is one of the people who has gone to the other side whose memory is always welcome. Since the moment I first met Tom Pruitt, my hillbilly sensei, teacher, I have studied mountain culture as closely as I now study donkey nature. I let people of the culture be my teachers by paying attention when they talked, thereby encouraging them. Over a period of five years, Lorne told me his life. It was the same as reading a biography, a sitting at a time, his memories told in more or less random order, like leaves falling from a tree, one at a time from different parts of the tree, every leaf an experience told. Not long after he left the body someone I know, who had taken Campbell on in a money deal and lost, spent over an hour telling me the sins and crimes of Lorne Campbell. He figured I only know Lorne's "good" side, like Campbell would only tell his past to me in self-serving ways. I laughed all the time, more within than without, because I knew every story he told. The best was that I could have told him some really bad shit that makes what he told like nothing, but I cannot disrespect my friend even when he's not here anymore. I did not even allude to knowing implicating stories about Campbell as a rogue. He liked having the name rogue. It gave him freedom. When he played poker, he played to win. He played golf to win, gambling on the golf course like at the poker table. When he did money wheeling-dealings, he played to win. He regarded life a game and played to win. Saying he played to win does not mean he was passionate about winning. It's the nature of gaming. A game is a competition. Somebody wins and that's what you play toward. He said court was the only place he was passionate about winning. Winning in court was what he did.

vincent van gogh

There was a time I entertained thought to write something about his life, but I don't want to disrespect his memory. I feel like what he told me, he told me. He didn't tell it on television. I was the one he chose at the end of his life to tell his life to. He was totally honest about himself. And what I told him of my life, in turn, was equally honest. I know he did not tell me "everything," but I didn't want to know everything. I have a rule of thumb for myself that I don't want to know anything about somebody that whoever it is doesn't tell me him or her self. Of course, I hear tales on people I know from time to time, but don't pay it any mind and don't want to hear it. It may not matter at all to me, but I'd still prefer to have heard it from the subject. I feel like people open to me when they trust me, trust me not to tell it around, not even to anybody. I feel it my responsibility to honor the trust. Trust is important in these hills. I made it a conscious point never to tell any of his dark side stories to anyone but my friend, Carole, whose trust is absolute. Two days before his spirit left the body, he said to me, "I've been looking at my life. It's been half good and half bad. I've forgiven everybody everything." My immediate thought was, he found his balance and signed off. Sayonara. Since the day he learned about Elvis dying sitting on the toilet, that was where he wanted to die. He got his wish. The nurse said, "That bowel movement was very important to him." I had to force a straight face and a funereal nod. I wanted to tell him so bad I got with him in spirit and told him. I don't mean anything psychic. I mean I focused my mind on his spirit and told him what happened. It either reached him or not. Doesn't matter. It was more for me than for him. He was more involved in the light he was rocketing into than the launch pad he left.

vincent van gogh

I met him in a time I was doing whatever-came-up, handy man jobs. A call from friend Lizabeth who sold mountain laurel with roots in dirt. Somebody had bought four and needed somebody to plant them. Much of the time I was digging the holes and putting the laurel in place, he sat on the deck reading. After awhile he called to me to take a break, sit in the shade, have some iced tea. He was reading Knut Hamsun's Hunger. Blew my mind. Somebody in Alleghany County reading Knut Hamsun? He was a Hamsun enthusiast without making literature of it. Just a writer he liked to read. Right away we identified each other readers. He read mostly presidential and political biographies, accounts of jail-breaks, stories of rogues. He turned me on to The Falcon and the Snowman. He knew by experience politicians were rogues. I asked him toward his later weeks if he had a guiding purpose along the way. He said he took up the practice of law to keep mountain boys out of prison. Mountain boys don't belong in prison. He said, "Our prison system is cruel and unusual punishment; therefore, unconstitutional. I can't change the system, but I can keep mountain boys out of prison." Everything else was little more to him than what you do to keep the office open. He was known all over Southwest Virginia as the lawyer who will hold your hand all the way to the prison door, meaning he will exhaust every possibility to keep you out, up to the very last second the door slams shut. I remember two guys he told me about in the prison at Bland, Virginia, wanting him to appeal their case. They got forty years for rape that was not rape. He said they went to him first and he quoted a price he'd do it for. They thought it too much and went to a lawyer who charged less. He could have got them a not-guilty; they got forty years. My head has so many good stories of people from Southwest Virginia, all different kinds of people. He taught me another level of understanding mountain people, a deeper appreciation.    

vincent van gogh himself

 

 

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A WILD GOOSE ADVENTURE

wild goose christian community center

Believe it or not, I went to church. Tuesday night church with rocking chairs instead of pews. Walking the length of the room, I was thinking, a dangerous place for cats. My friend Edwin Lacy is the minister or whatever he calls himself. I don't think Edwin calls himself anything in that regard. Edwin is an old-time banjo picker truly in the tradition and truly in his own style. It is important in the tradition to have your own style to interpret the tunes your own unique way. Edwin's banjo pickin is his own. Edwin is an artist in the form of music. When Edwin plays music, it is music, too. I mean by music, what we all know. When I hear Edwin play, I hear music, music I feel inside, music that makes me tap my feet unconsciously, good drive. There are bands that play well, good musicians, but sometimes there is just something a little bit short of music. Like at an old-time fest, some bands force people to run to the front to dance. Other bands, people sit back, listen, enjoy it, but it's short of music. When my friend Jr Maxwell heard a band like that he'd say, "Aint no music in it." I mean by music when it forces people to dance, leaves no choice. Even if I don't jump up and start flat-footin, I'm feeling it inside. Sometimes when the music is really moving, I sit as still as if no music were happening. I was called on it once at an old-time venue when the music was really going, I was grooving good, sitting still soaking it up, like donkey Jack bathing in the sunlight. An old summer-resident neighbor of mine from Florida jumped on me for not moving. How can you not move to this music? One of those moments when everybody looks at you. I was in bliss and she pulled me right out of it. Back to Edwin. He's an ordained Presbyterian preacher, went to seminary in Indiana, or anyway, that's where his first church was. Maybe the seminary was in Ohio. I've never been clear on exactly where the seminary was. Up north. He was gone for several years. He found a way to have himself assigned to a church in Bristol, bringing him closer to home and his musician friends who missed him like crazy. After a few years at Bristol, he found his woman, Roye, married her, found an old empty church way outside Hillsville, Virginia, rural as it rural is. Southwest Virginia is beautiful landscape. Edwin declared the church his own, however that is done, calls it the Wild Goose Christian Community and meets on Tuesday evenings, good potluck dinner brought by the women at 6:30.

 

edwin lacy

 

the interior

forty or so people sat in a big circle all the way around

 

Mac and Jenny Traynham made some music during the meeting. They are in the corner in the picture above. First thing in the meeting, he played an old tune on a fiddle, old-timey hillbilly fiddle, the kind of slow fiddle playing that moves my heart, where sometimes he plays two strings at once. It chokes me up remembering it. Later, Mac and Jenny picked guitars and sang. Edwin does not preach. He spoke of the attitude that the people there were intelligent people who have valuable insights. He chose for the theme some verses from the book of James, The brother in humble circumstances ought to take pride in his high position. But the one who is rich should take pride in his low position.  Very interesting discussion followed, different people providing insight. It was one of those moments I felt was a celebration of our individual diversity. Everyone who spoke had their own insight. The diversity of points of view worked toward unity instead of division. Edwin's scripture he uses to state the purpose of what he calls Wild Goose Uprising, came from a prayer by Jesus: May those who believe in me be brought to complete unity, Father, one as we are one, I in them and you in me. This was at the top of the sheet of paper passed around to everyone with the outline of the service, words to a song all were to sing together. Reading the scripture, I realized that inside a year Edwin has pulled together several people who really do gather in unity into community. I did not know Edwin's intent to gather a community of people who care about each other, though this falls in line with the Edwin I know. I felt like Edwin's integrity as a "minister" carried the least ego of any preacher I've ever heard. He was not about look-at-me. He's more in line with look-at-you. He did not need to be in the midst of everybody with their attention on him. He turned the attention back to the people themselves. It was never, Let me tell you how much I know. He was saying, Tell me how much you know, enrich me with your insight. He would start a song leading it until everybody was in the flow of the song, then he backed off from the lead and let everybody sing. I'd only known Edwin before, person to person, and him a musician I admire the highest. It felt just right in his circle, true to the Edwin I know. I already knew he was not ego-tripping as a preacher. I felt the satisfaction that he approached his spiritual role with the same humility he lives his everyday life, even on stage. He's a humble stage presence, tells good jokes, sings as good as he picks a banjo. He's there to make music, not to make a spectacle of himself.

 

edwin a-pickin and a-grinnin

 

mac and jenny traynham

 

I've been wanting to make it to Edwin's Wild Goose Uprising since he started it. It's a daunting drive, sixty miles of mountain road, the only kind I like to drive, a little over an hour and a half. That's really no drive at all, but I am so jealous of my home time that a 3-4 hour round trip and a couple hours of sitting and standing around was no lure at all. Sometimes I'd say, This coming Tuesday I'm going. Tuesday comes around and I'm not feeling like committing to six hours at the end of the day, leave at five, home at eleven. Some years ago I heard about a friend here who was teaching yoga. I talked to her about it. She taught in Winston-Salem, and invited me to come to the class. Driving an hour and a half each way in interstate mayhem to spend an hour relaxing did not compute. By the time I'm home all the relaxation is exhausted from attention given to staying on the road for an hour and a half. Over twenty dollars in gas per round trip plus the cost of the class. No yoga for me. My friend Debi has a deep faith. She recently had what she called a "Holy Spirit" visitation, and I believe her interpretation. I've been wanting to give Debi a chance to experience a church situation outside the traditional, believing she'd like it. I thought I could make the drive much better with Debi along. I've known Debi as long as I've lived here. She's lived someplace else most of those years, but she's been back several years by now. It seems like things are going Debi's way for a change. She says she's in the best place she's been in her whole life. I know a large number of her relatives. Our bond is around her great uncle Tom Pruitt, my nearest neighbor and my teacher for the farm work in the early years. I knew Tom in my first fourteen years a hillbilly and Tom's last fourteen years. Tom was proud that he was born a Regular Baptist and a Republican, and he died a Regular Baptist and Republican. It was evidence to him that he did not change, he died the same as he was born. The ideal was not to change because God did not change. I, who have spent my entire life in ongoing change to the point of embracing change, found Tom's estimation a whole new way of thinking. Not for me, but I'd never met anyone whose pride was in never changing. His brother, Millard, the Regular Baptist Elder, held the same pride for himself. Both would be buried in the cemetery of the church they grew up in and were saved in, where mother and daddy were buried. It was an experience I could not fathom.  

 

debi in the middle

a charming 6 mo old baby next to debi

 

debi

 

Our drive to the church was an adventure neither Debi nor I will ever forget. It will be memory we'll hold in common the rest of our lives. I entered the address in the GPS device on the dash. I believed I could take the Parkway to within maybe twenty miles of the place. The GPS told me to exit the Parkway and take 89 to Galax on the way to Hillsville. I did not want to drive through Galax so soon after work let out, thought I'd override the GPS and go a way I believed better. Major error. I took us all over the place, crossing the interstate twice, and finally taking 52. All this was way out of the way. When I left 52 I decided it was time to follow the GPS. I'd never been in this part of the world. It took us over one dirt road after another, four miles on one, six miles on another, one after the other, nice scenic roads, a nice drive. Drive a few miles and turn on Bent Nail Road and Slaughter Hill Road, just two of the names I remember. Slaughter Hill Road was only as wide as one car, banks straight up on both sides, something like a mud luge track. Big potholes. One, I had to stop and study a way to get through it. Some of them bounced the rearview mirror off its mount, things were flying all around inside the car, we were laughing and wondering what could be next. It was several miles on that one lane road hoping nobody was coming our way around any of the blind curves. An old wagon road is what it was. The relief to see the pavement when we came to the end of Slaughter Hill Road was near ecstasy. As all the roads were worse and worse from one to the next, we dreaded what the next road might be. Turned left onto the paved road and the church was right there. We had arrived on time. On the road home I decided to let the GPS be my guide. First thing: Slaughter Hill Road. It was going to take us back the same way we came. No, we're not doing that again. I turned onto the paved road to Hillsville, the GPS compensated and from there on took us by highway all the way home. Comparing the mileage each way, I went twelve miles out of the way first try. I had a good learning out of it. Debi and I agreed we had an adventure, that the drive was one hundred percent adventure.

 

The website: wildgoosecc.com

 

To see video of Edwin, write Edwin Lacy in the search box at YouTube and you'll have a big selection. His band is Skeeter and the Skidmarks. They have several tunes on YouTube. They do a mighty fine Yellow Rose of Texas with the original lyrics. Mac and Jenny Traynham are on YouTube too.

 

 

first daffodils

first crocuses

 

 

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ON THE ROAD TO THE WILLIE NELSON CONCERT

 

 

It's been a string of lazy days here. I let good days go by that I could have been doing some necessary outdoor chores, and let the time slip away. Got a Willie Nelson show coming up tomorrow night in Roanoke. I'm resting toward the drive. I'll be driving total of six hours probably. I'm not taking the interstate, but the highway from Galax to Woodlawn to Hillsville to Floyd, where I'd like to stop for dinner, then on to Roanoke. It's a beautiful drive. Beautiful country through there. It's the region where the events of the movie LAWLESS took place. None of that will be there, but the landscape. Southwest Virginia is beautiful mountain scenery, mountains you can roll with on the highway, flow this way and that, up and down, fenceposts, cattle, horses, old farmhouses with gingerbread along the edge of the roof. I want to leave in plenty of time to relax in the drive and enjoy the ride. Kathryn, who will be with me, loves this part of the world too. I've driven the highway to Roanoke in the mid 1980s many times, know it well. The road will not have changed much except for through the towns that grow more every year. Thought I'd take the Parkway to 52, 52 to 221, 221 to Roanoke. Interstate would be faster but on interstate we could be anyplace in USA. Interstates and malls are the same all over the country. Might take interstate on the way back when it's dark.

 

 

 

My mind went to work looking at the driving in a time when my energy isn't what it one time was, then walking no guessing how far from parking space to door, then from door to seat no guessing how far. The sciatic nerve in left leg is acting up. It will be as far to walk back to the car as from car to seat. I decided to take a cane, in case my energy gives out inconveniently. I have Jr Maxwell's cane I bought him to replace one he ran over with the car. It is one of those lightweight shiny aluminum canes, adjustable in length with a good rubber tip for grip, and a foam rubber handle. It will look like I just left the hospital. With Kathryn's white hair and my white hair with Farm Bureau ballcap and the hospital cane, we'll get every senior privilege there is. I'll hear "Sir" a dozen times. This is, after all, the South where older people tend to be regarded with respect. That's changing, of course. It's all right. We won't be the oldest ones there. Willie is ten years my senior. I won't be the only one with a cane. A cane makes a good martial arts weapon too. It tears me up that Steve Lewis will be playing in Woodlawn that night. When it comes to my preferences, I'd rather go to a Steve Lewis show than a Willie Nelson show, but the tickets are in hand and it's basically a gift to Kathryn, who has loved Willie Nelson's music about all her grownup life. I never paid any attention to him until I heard an interview with him on NPR about his 80th birthday, and took an interest in him. This show will pump me full of appreciation for Willie Nelson. Gonna see a lotta Jack Daniels and Harley Davidson tshirts. Maybe I'll get Kathryn a Willie Nelson tshirt if she'd like, you know, for been there, done that, bought the tshirt.

 

 

 

It's the kind of place they might ask Vets to stand up and be honored. I'd hate it, but I'd stand and be embarrassed seeing people nearby gaping at me in admiration and clapping like it's participation tv, a white-haired Vet, Lord Have Mercy, and I'd be thinking, Don't ask how much I hated it. At the time. Since, I've come to see it as one of the most valuable times in my life, perhaps it. The draft took me out of my life and provided time to look at my life, look at it with distance and a cold eye. I came out of it very different from when I went in. Looked and acted the same, but something major had changed inside. A change of direction. A change from unconscious to barely conscious.  It was a time of making some major life decisions I've not regretted since. Came out of it a little bit educated in Existentialism after reading so many novels, plays and essays by French Existentialist writers. Their books were like feedbags for me. I had found the philosophy that accorded with who I am. It started with Camus, who pointed me to deBeauvoir, and Sartre. They turned me on to Jean Genet, who could only write in prison. They turned me on to some pretty heady writing. By the end of those two years of reading every spare moment, I was able to read with comprehension, had learned a great deal about WW2 in France, the French Underground, had developed an interest in French writing. From there I started college. Came out of high school a moron, not by IQ test score, but certainly by lack of understanding how to live in this world. I felt like I was in prison the whole time. But I needed it. It was better than land prison. They let me ride the ocean and paid me to do it. The intimacy with the ocean was worth everything that got me there, like intimacy with the mountains in this time of the life is worth every experience that made my path to these beautiful hills that Ralph Stanley calls the hills of home.  

 

 

 

I don't believe they'll ask Vets to stand, but wouldn't bet against it. Don't expect it. But know better than to expect anything. I know better than to expect the concert will even happen. I know better than to think I'll wake in the morning. There are so many hundreds of thousands of variables between here and there, I don't even attempt to think about it. One thing living in this world has taught me, do not expect. Just don't. Expectation never works out. It's always something else. And then I'm so disappointed I miss what's happening. Kathryn has raised four girls, two husbands, and is now taking care of her mother. She's not overrun with expectations either. We're both in a good place in that way. We're free enough of expectation to allow the show to be what it is. It's a legitimate expectation that it will be a really good concert, but it's not certain. No worries. We'll both go open to the moment and receive what it has to offer. For me, it's about being with Kathryn, who I don't see often enough and haven't seen in awhile. I'm looking at, for myself, six hours with Kathryn, Willie Nelson the turn around point. I want to give Kathryn a break from the caregiving responsibility that after awhile becomes something like dragging a cinderblock tied to one ankle. It feels good to let go of that cinderblock for awhile. No problem putting it back on, but it feels so good to simply have a break. Mama will be watched over by granddaughter and great granddaughter. It will be a fun time for all concerned, I expect.

 

 

 

 

 

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