There Ain't No God In Mexico, Ain't No Comfort In The Cane

I generally believe something needs moving parts to have a soul. That would explain why my iPod still has a clickwheel. But sometimes, these electronical devices do something that makes me step back and rethink that theory...because Pandora smacked me in the face this morning with a sweaty, bearded Waylon Jennings belting out some Billy Joe Shaver lyrics in "There Ain't No God In Mexico."

I don't have an extensive record collection and despite my general luddite tendencies, I've never fully bought into the "it sounds better on vinyl" belief. I really don't believe it for music that was recorded on modern, digital equipment. But, I do lend some credence to the idea that things should be heard in the context of their own time. Music of the 50s, 60s, 70s was recorded with the intention of putting it on vinyl, with all its crackling imperfections. Listening to these albums this way is the reason to have a working turntable. To be able to hear the thing in all its non-remastered, non-digitized glory, the same way people heard it when it was first created, generates a connection to the era from which it came.

All this and more is why I own "Waylon Live" on vinyl. I mean look at the cover art. That's how babies are made, right there-- hairy-chested, mustachioed indestructible redneck babies whose piss smells like straight Dickel for the first three weeks of life. Just touching this album cover is not recommended for pre-teen girls, as it might accelerate them into premature womanhood and virgin pregnancies. I haven't listened to it in probably three years. But yes, Pandora, it's time to break it back out. I need some Waylon.

"Down the road a-ways I've heard said there's a new day comin'. Where the womenfolk are friendly and the law leaves you alone. Well, I'll believe it when I see it and I ain't seen it yet. Don't mind me, just keep on talkin'. I'm just looking for my hat."

It's Rush Hour in Cumberland County, But They Ain't Heard The News (Travelogue Part 2)

I spent rush hour in Cumberland County, Tennessee, somewhere between Nashville and Knoxville. Rush hour arrives in Cumberland with about as much fanfare as the Muslim Hajj. Maybe sometime, someone heard something about a bunch of people moving around at the same time for some unknown purpose. But nobody really understood why or believed that such a thing went on in the world. It passes unnoticed. Needless to say, this was good timing on my part.

Loosely translated, this sign reads "Next Exit, Cool Springs Mall."

Look at this Pho-to-Graph! While I did not have time to explore and experience the important historical sites passed along the way, I'm certainly not above pulling over to the side of any road in any vehicle for unexpected photo opportunities that present themselves on the side of the road. Traffic, pride, parking accommodations be damned. 

Unfortunately, in what was a major oversight, my camera was packed somewhere in the madness of the back of the Uhaul. Given the questionable structural integrity of my packing at the beginning of the trip and the possibility of contents shifting during flight, I thought it best not to attempt to recover it. 

Along the Interstates, everything basically looks the same. But once I pulled off south of Nashville onto highway 45...there's stuff. As part of the as-yet-unplanned return trip where I will take in the wonders of the Natural Bridge and Rock City, a ready camera will be a necessity. Somewhere outside of Jackson, Tennessee, I passed by a burned-out shell of a house with a swimming pool slide still standing behind it. With the right angle, it could've looked like a slide that let out directly into the doorway of the house. It was almost enough to get me to tempt unleashing the chaos of the truck cargo bay to get to the camera.

Green and White Jesus. They started appearing somewhere around Nashville, gained strength outside Jackson, but persisted throughout most of midwestern Tennessee. Green yard signs that just said "JESUS" in white block lettering. No context, no further information. Just "JESUS." There's some political campaign yard sign company that has come up with a brilliant gimmick for keeping up business in the off season. It'd be like a a heart-shaped candy maker replacing "Be Mine" with "Get Saved" in an effort to keep the factory running all year. 

During the mid-90s in Mississippi, there was a fad of PVC signs with mini-marquee letter slots. People would put them in their yards with excerpts from scripture. It was the early predecessor to Tim Tebow's eye black (which never made use of the darker side of the Bible. For Tennessee weekend or an away game into Death Valley, you gotta break out the Revelations). But at least that made sense as a statement of faith. You had to actually crack a Bible and pick out a verse and a passage. "This is something that means something to me, go check it out." The JESUS signs are just lazy tokens that come dangerously close to using the Lord's name in vain. It's just blunt, meaningless space-filler put into the world for lack of anything else to say; the yard decoration equivalent of hitting your thumb with a hammer and muttering "Christ" under your breath as you grab your hand. 


Green and White Houses. At the opposite end of the green and white yard sign blasphemies are the green and white houses. And they are also all along this stretch of road. Green roof, white trim, double chimney houses. The white brick or wood or stucco show age, but not in a cheap way. It's a classic deterioration, like silver hair behind the ears. It's more establishment than neglect. It's that aging that sets apart the true estates from the cheap vinyl siding imitations, which just end up looking like unbrushed teeth after 2 years. 


Green and White Vegetation. If there hasn't been a country song to use the phrase "like a dogwood in the pines," it's for sale for a low, low royalty. In rows and rows of green roadside pine trees, the sparse blooming white dogwoods are brilliantly conspicuous. 


"I saw her there at the 7th grade dance like a dogwood among the pines." It's got Tim McGraw megahit written all over it. Perhaps "Evergreen Love" could be the title. It's the next "Don't Take The Girl." This  isn't meant derisively. I have a sad, soft spot for bad country. I just want to contribute to the genre.

Or, if you could even go Southern gothic edgy, "The line of blow laid upon the piles of cash like a dogwood in the pines and his ears filled with the roar of an I-20 log truck."


In Twitter literature, there's no need to put in the work of doing complete novels. Just catchlines, similes and metaphors sold separately to fill out whatever existing framework you already have in place. 99 cents per phrase. 


Holly Springs Swamp Land. Speaking of bad country lyrics, I've got some good swamp land for sale in Holly Springs. There it was, a "For Sale" sign on the roadside from ReMax claiming an investment opportunity. It wasn't just mildly moist land or some seasonal flooding. This was swamp. Probably at least hip deep, cypress knee dotted swamp. I assume you'd buy it to hunt ducks or farm crawfish or dispose of bodies, but I couldn't think of anything but Monty Python's Holy Grail, because I'm a British teenager from 1975.

Betty Davis, Whore of the Free Market. Bette Davis had eyes that were song worthy and is a symbol of early Hollywood beauty. Betty Davis is a shack right on the Marshall County line, marking the course to Oxford like the edge of the Holy Land. It's a monument to the fact that people will drive for cold beer and warmed-over ribs. In Oxford, where cold beer is illegal and no beer is legal on Sunday, Betty Davis, slut that she is, has made a comfortable living picking up the needs that can't be filled in proper incorporated society. 

The debate stretches across generations, disciplines and social strata of Ole Miss attendees and still remains unsolved. Hotly and passionately debated among scholars and slackers, everyone with a strong, unrelenting dogmatic belief one way or the other-- If one group of foresight-lacking college kids buys a case of warm beer in Oxford and puts it in ice and another group of kids drives out to Betty Davis to purchase a cold case, which one will get to the baseball outfield with the coldest beverages before first pitch? Like the enigma of the Tootsie Pop, we may never know.


Take Me Back, To Oxford Mississippi. I see her. I know she's there. She probably doesn't really remember me. Probably doesn't care or wouldn't notice, if I just zipped by without a second glance. She's moved on. I, sadly, haven't. 


And so, I have no choice but to swerve a little out of the way to stop in and gawk for a while at the sundress in the breeze that is the Oxford Square. I meet up with an old friend who still is lucky enough to maintain an honest and productive existence in Oxford and we head to lunch. There are some who don't believe in the legend of the fat vegetarian. It's understandable. I mean, not everybody's been to Ajax Diner. 


The meatloaf is good. The catfish, better than average. All manner of sandwiches and chicken fried steak and burgers and they're all solid, classic comfort food selections. But the star is the veggies. Fried eggplant, fried okra, cheese fries (veggie? sure), squash casserole, hash brown casserole, cornbread dressing, butter beans, turnip greens, mac and cheese, fresh tomatoes with homemade mayonaise (sadly, not in season at the time of this visit)...oh man. It's food coma-inducing vegetation and starch and clearly outshines the proteins. Fewer animals would need to die if more places did vegetables like Ajax. We have sweet tea and catfish with extra tartar sauce and talk about times just far away enough to sound like lies. And then, it's time to load back up into the Uhaul. 


New Orleans is the end of the road. There's still a little way to go, but the rest is familiar and could be done on autopilot. Treebeard had it right. I like going South. Somehow, it feels like going downhill.

Pray to God I See Headlights... Traveloge Part 1

The late night commercials were wrong.

Despite a love for the freedom of the open road. Despite a desire to be my own boss, set my own hours and earn a good wage. After two days and 1300 miles in the cab of a truck, I now know that those commercials and my woozy, pre-dawn delusions of diesel-fueled grandeur were wrong.

My future is not in the exciting industry of long haul trucking.

I thought I was well prepared. After all, I had at one time owned a C.W. McCall cassette tape. I brought sleeveless shirts, loose-fitting canvass pants. An iPod loaded with new music, as well as podcasts. A sturdy soul, BP powder, three bags of pop rocks and a box of Girl Scout cookies (It's just you and me, Shortbread. One of us isn't going to make it across the Mississippi). It wasn't enough.

What I lacked was a spring-loaded spine and an ass like a bean bag chair. Short of that, the only salvation would've been a bottle of muscle relaxers waiting at my destination like the quaaludes-packed carrot on the end of the proverbial stick (as used in the filming of "The Lost Boys"). 

Historical Markers. Despite all the pain and persistent audible creaking every time I rotate my neck, I would like to do this drive again. With a loser schedule and a more comfortable conveyance, I've discovered something I kind of already knew-- they got stuff in this plucky stretch of America. Stuff that tickles the little ironic snark-happy hipster traveler who nonchalantly squats on the couch of everybody's brain. But also stuff of actual historical significance that reaffirms a connection with our country's past. And there are more than a few sites that artfully straddle the fence between the two.

The Davy Crockett Tavern, Davy Crockett Birthplace. The Davy Crockett Travel Center-- where there are six different flavors of Cappuccino, including Rabid Coon (extra foam), the Bear Grinner (with a dusting of ground Yellow Jacket), Alamojo (chicory and horny goat weed) and Wintergreen. 

Casey Jones Museum, National Bird Dog Museum, Rusty's Historic TV and Movie Car Museum, The Natural Bridge (Damn you, Natural Bridge, haunting my travels. I can't tell you how many times I've passed by this place and, despite my curiosity, never been able to stop), Luray Caverns, the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library, the Stonewall Jackson House and the George C. Marshall Museum (which share a highway exit...possibly more?).

These are things that need to be seen and can only be truly appreciated by someone without anywhere else in particular to be. 

Gasoline. I contributed heavily to the Jugheadistan country coffers. There were initially plans to drive at a constant, conservative speed throughout the trip in an effort to maximize fuel efficiency. That went out the window about 10 miles into open interstate when I encountered my first '89 Lincoln Continental doing 72 mph where I wanted to do 73. Three gallons of rapid acceleration later, and I'm scanning the truck stop signs pricing unleaded.

The variation is staggering. In one 30-mile stretch of highway I passed 10 different gas stations with prices ranging anywhere from $3.16 to $3.69 a gallon. And there was no rhyme or reason to any of it, turning the entire experience into a rolling version of Deal or No Deal. Do you want to take the $3.29 a gallon at the Exxon at exit 18B or would you like to play on? I've got the banker on the line right now...and he's offering an additional hot rollers-cooked meat product and a free bottle of water with a 10 gallon purchase.

Surely the app already exists where your GPS/iPhone scans the road ahead and displays the gas prices for your shopping convenience. And once that becomes standard equipment, things seem like they'd have to even out. Until then, it's just Howie Mandel in my head tempting with cheeseburger rollers and the fear of things unseen.

iPod Kills The Radio Star. This shit is going to happen. Instead of blindly scanning the Eastern Tennessee airwaves, I chose my own destiny of podcasts. No Taylor Swift. No local drive-time political rabble. No "Today's Hits" or "Yesterday's Favorites." No commercials. I ran through hours of podcasts and caught up on everything from the air gun assaults of English Premier League soccer players to a brief history of the fall of the French Bourbons. I listened to my favorite wrestler (The Heartbreak Kid) talk about his religious rebirth and how that meshed with his work in a generally crude profession. And Real World Star "The Miz"proclaim that he had ended the city of Cleveland's title drought by winning the WWE Championship Belt. He then more or less challenged LeBron James to a fight. Finally, I took in Oscar recaps from a variety of sources, including the screenwriter of "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" proclaiming Will Smith to be the only true movie star of the current film industry.

And then...at 9:38 pm 21 miles outside of Nashville, the iPod battery died. I was tossed back, scared and screaming, into the unmerciful abyss of the airwaves. Like Adam and Eve tossed out of Eden and into Bob's Country Bunker. I found a local ESPN affiliate that sustained me with Brian McKinney inanely taking calls from a national audience on the value of drafting defensive or offensive players. Because I care what some lonely trucker in Peoria thinks about NFL draft strategy.  But, by boiling it down to a meaningless 50-50 coin flip of offense vs. defense, you enable the lowest dominator to engage. I whist-fully daydreamed about the halcyon minutes prior when I was able to listen to an Oscar-winning screenwriter discuss a subject on which he had interesting ideas and thoughts and tried once again for any last scrap of juice in my iPod. Unless you're claiming responsibility for an act of arbotoreal terrorism on a rival school, I really could not be less interested in what's coming off the radio phone lines.  At least it wasn't pre-teen romance from a persistently slack-jawed 20 year old relationship masochist who clearly made a deal with some unholy entity for tunes that stick on your brain like Alzheimer's plaque.

Satellite Tether. It's honestly not hard. You hit the interstate and go until you see a sign telling you to go somewhere else. When in doubt, just head south and west. But still, there's this doubt. Did I miss a sign? Where EXACTLY am I and how does that relate to where I need to go?

I haven't had a car, much less a GPS, in four years. But the cars I've ridden in, and occasionally driven, in that time almost all had either a GPS unit or smart phone constantly updating, reaffirming your place on the planet.

Being without it creates a constant, nagging anxiety. There aren't a lot of landmarks and what landmarks there are don't mean much without some kind of further reference. It's a loss of instinctual swagger that's a little troubling. I'm going this way because I know it's the way I need to go. I've seen the maps. I've been watching the road signs. I don't need this constant affirmation that every step along the way is correct, some metallic matronly voice behind an LED screen constantly providing positive reinforcement. And this is from someone who's only used these devices in the periphery. I can only imagine what it would feel like to an every day owner-operator.

TBC...