A Common Pornography: A Memoir

Country Music Memories

1. I’m in our bathroom and Dad is listening to Hank Williams on a tinny-sounding radio, which sits on the washer. I am probably six or seven. I’m sitting atop the dryer because it’s warm on my bottom. I watch him shave and he sings along with Hank, sort of yodeling-like. My brothers are outside playing football with the neighbor kids. I can’t play because I have the mumps. I look just like Robert Blake, who we watch on the TV show Baretta. I like looking at my face in the mirror as Dad sings.

2. I am supposed to meet my parents at the big fountain in the mall. I’ve been hanging out with my other twelve-year-old friends at the drug store, where we shamelessly loiter and look at comic books. I have to walk through JCPenney to get to the fountain. In the stereo department I hear the Charlie Daniels Band’s “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.” Although I’m already late to meet my folks, I sit on the floor and listen, fascinated by the singer’s fast-talking tale of deceit. I am grounded for a week.

3. Not long after Charlie Daniels became a household name, I decided to go with the crowd on a certain consensus: country music is bad. I know now that much of the country music from that era (the seventies) was actually good, but I was trying to be popular. I was into the Clash and Elvis Costello. Still, Juice Newton was becoming popular at this time and she was actually playing a concert at our high school gymnasium that I wanted to attend. She was a good-looking Daisy Duke type of lady with long Crystal Gayle–like hair. Plus her name was Juice. I sat in the upper seats and discreetly tapped my toes to her hit “Queen of Hearts.”

4. One of my first jobs out of broadcasting school was doing the weekend evening shows at a Spokane country music station. There was a big History of Country Music book that I used for little factoids when I wanted to sound like I knew what the hell I was playing. I’d talk about how Freddy Fender was once in prison or that Eddie Rabbitt was from Brooklyn. I spoke of George Jones as if we were ancient friends. I learned that I actually liked some of the music, especially the old wild hollerin’ stuff like Bob Wills and Earl Scruggs. I even took a shine to singers like Tammy Wynette and Dolly Parton, whom of course I fantasized about. I even felt an emotional tug whenever I played Glen Campbell’s “Wichita Lineman,” looking out the big seventh-floor window and wondering, “How is my girlfriend doing me wrong tonight?”