The Blues

Dear Friends and Followers: I found Big Dope asleep at this computer this morning and the following was on it. I snuck in beside him and posted it before he woke up. Enjoy!

 I recall a man I worked with on my first full time day job as “filling-station” attendant. His name, I seem to remember, was Calvin and he was probably in his thirties with a family. His job was washing cars. He didn’t own one himself. He walked home and back for dinner (lunch) and one day he was five minutes late getting back, so the boss, a real Arkansas a**hole, fired him. Being late was just an excuse. The real reason? He was “uppity.” Didn’t show proper respect for his “betters.” I’ve never been able to erase the sight of him as he walked back toward home with his hands in his pockets and his head sunk into his shoulders.

I don’t imagine Calvin ever sang the blues. A person could get fired for doing that as well.

I also recall the “cotton-choppers” that traded at my father’s little country grocery store. A truck with a covered bed would pick them up before daylight to take them to the fields. They would stop at our store and buy food to eat at noon. Then, after chopping all day, they would stop back by after dark and get something for supper and, if there was enough money left, breakfast.

This went on until the crops were laid by. I don’t know what they did for food until it was time to pick the cotton.

I’ll admit I never heard them sing the blues. I never heard them sing at all. They were too tired.

I do know that I have heard stories about this farmer and that one who would “short” them on pay and laugh about it for the victims had no recourse for justice. Maybe they did sing the blues in the quiet and safety of their own homes.

I also know they led a wretched, oppressed life in which they couldn’t drink from a white water fountain, use a public restroom, send their children to a decent school, or—oftentimes—vote.

From what I understand, it must have been
those poor black folks up north that sang
 the blues. Those in the south were happy
 with their lot. Saw that on Fox News. - C.W.

I do know that anyone who would believe they chose such a life would be ignorant enough to believe that we choose our sexuality, or that we should be either rewarded or punished for it.

I do know that these experiences caused me to try to lead a life that would attend to the poor in spirit and the downtrodden and to be wary of those who worship riches too much, whether they be hedge-fund managers, corporate executives, or televangelists. I’ve also remained aware of the many unearned benefits resulting from enough northern-European DNA to have me classified as “Caucasian.”

 

Maybe that’s why I don’t watch reality TV shows about rednecks. Nor do I pay much attention to what they say or think, unless they say something that is really, really, stupid. Then it makes me remember all the Calvins I have known. All the a**holes, too.

115. Expectations

C.W. was giving me a hard time, not for anything in particular, just on general principles. It had something to do with his latest review by the Falloonian Elders. He was pedantic, which explained his professorial get-up, complete with thick horn-rimmed glasses, bow-tie, and a tweed sports coats with patches on the elbows.

 

“They aren’t satisfied with my choice of an Earthling counterpart,” he said.

“Choose another, then,” I said.

“It’s not quite that easy,” he said. “You see, a person’s path to enlightenment is formed by the realism-expectation didactic.”

“Whatever,” I said. “So what is their major complaint?”

He thought. “They feel,” he stopped. “How did they put it ...?”

“That I am too good for this world?”

“No, they seem to think that you are, as they put it, a parchestantic shy of a firnicastachian.”

That hurt, but I tried not to let it show.

“For example,” he said. “You don’t even know how to send text messages on your cell phone.”

“Somehow I survive.”

“Your picture has never been in the society section of your newspaper. I know. I have researched the matter.”

“Guilty,” I said.

“I find no evidence that you fly fish, play golf or tennis, or even make periodic pilgrimages to Savannah, Georgia.”

“So?”

“It wouldn’t hurt you to try and fit the mold.” He brandished a stack of travel brochures.

“I’m not going to Branson, Missouri.”

He quickly removed the topmost brochure. “Nobody is asking you to.”

“Where then?”

“Well,” he said, glancing down. “There is Disneyland.”

“Why don’t you take those brochures and …” I began before he interrupted me.

“Now don’t become hostile in the face of honest criticism.”

“Besides,” I said, calming a bit. “I am going to a cultural event, next week in fact, and I am taking you and the entire family.”

“Oh boy,” he said, resorting to the childlike C.W. that charms our hearts so. “Where?”

Oh boy! Nothing beats the King Biscuit Blues Festival.
Here is B.B. King from a couple of years ago.
Big Dope is so good to me. - C.W.

“The King Biscuit Blues Festival in Helena-West Helena, Arkansas.”

He brightened for a second before re-assuming his serious demeanor. “Uh,” he said. “Don’t you see?” He paused, choosing his words slowly. “Isn’t that a bit earthy? The Elders expect something more, well, socially prominent for our social forays.”

I smiled. Some mischievous cosmic force had delivered him into my hands. “Okay,” I said. “We won’t go.”

Alarm spread across his face. “Oh no,” he said. “I think we should.” He collected his thoughts and grimaced perceptibly, “We can always attend a wine-tasting when we return.”          

20. Politics and Brotherhood

A group of friends and I were seated comfortably, enjoying the 25th year of the King Biscuit Blues Festival on the banks of the Mississippi River in Helena-West Helena, Arkansas. The crowd was loving the music. In fact, beer and enthusiasm had already combined to convince a number of folks to start dancing. It was a beautiful October day, and all seemed well with the world.

A friend sitting beside me offered to make a beer run before the next act, one of his favorites. He left and I became distracted by an elderly white lady dancing with a whole group of folks and anyone else who happened to walk by. A hand tapped me on the shoulder. It was my friend, the beer-runner, or so I thought.

“Perry,” I said. “You back already?”

“Shhh. Be quiet. I want to talk to you for a minute.”

Jeez. It was C.W. in the shape of my friend Perry. I had left the alien a while back sitting on the seat of a Harley Davidson Motorcycle on Cherry Street belting out a blues rendition of “The Promised Land, and in the shape of a motorcycle gang member.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I been walking around looking,” he said. “There are at least a dozen different races of folks gathered up here from all parts of the Globe having fun together. Look there.” He pointed at an elderly African-American man who had stopped and was dancing with the lady I mentioned earlier.

“Yes,” I said. “That’s what happens at blues festivals.”

“That’s amazing,” he said. “In many parts of your state, people leave their homes and move away to some dreadful place to avoid living near people of different races. Here they travel from all over to be together.”

“It’s something alright,” I said.

“Do the races get along this well all the time here?”

“Maybe not always.”

“Really. That’s too bad.”

“But,” I added. “I am told that people do work together as a single soul to put this show together.”

“Interesting,” he said.

We watched the act for a moment. A young guitarist was putting on a show and the crowd was urging him on.”

“I don’t much like the politics of your species,” he said from out of nowhere.

“I don’t think anyone does,” I said.

“Why don’t they change the process?” he asked.

“Too much cost sunk into maintaining it, I suppose.”

“Wouldn’t it be better if Congress met only at blues festivals?”

I looked at him to see if he was serious. He was.

“Let me get back to you on that. Here comes Perry.” I pointed to our right.

When I glanced around, he was gone.

Perry eased back and handed me a beer. He started to say something but a wave of excitement moved through the crowd. There were shouts of: “Look,” and “I told you he was alive,” and “Oh my god, he’s real!”

It seemed that Elvis was walking along in front of our part of the park. He hurried along but stopped every once in awhile to wave.

“That goddam little twerp,” I thought to myself.

18. The Blues and Unified Theories

A crowd had gathered near the entrance to the Clinton Presidential Library and I could hear music so I walked that way. There, in the center of a great deal of excitement was a blues singer. Thin, leathery, and missing a couple of teeth, his ebony-black skin was glistening from the midday heat. He was picking a time-encrusted Fender Telecaster plugged into a small, battery-powered amplifier. He was belting a fair version of Kind-Hearted Woman Blues. The crowd loved it.

He finished a verse, added a neat run on the A minor scale and finished. “Thankee,” he said to the crowd’s approving applause. That’s when I knew.

Yeah, it was C.W. alright. But how did he learn to sing? I remembered the last time he tried. It was pitiful. I stood and watched as a few coins sailed into his guitar case.

“Thankee, thankee,” he said. “Now I got to be goin’. The city don’t allow no guitar playing colored men in their parks. I be back later.” He gathered the coins, stored his guitar, and looked up at me. He grabbed his amp and guitar and walked over.

“Jimbo.”

“Don’t call me that. And what are you doing?”

“Let’s walk,” he said.

So there we went. A strange couple if there ever was one. A fat old white man and an ageless blues singer ambling along as if the world had been created in their honor.

He broke the silence first. “Tell me what you think is the most moving literature your planet has produced so far—I mean that which has most affected the way your people write in prose and poetry.”

I thought. “Maybe Shakespeare?”

Good choice. Some would argue the Bible but for some reason your myth-spirits gave Brother Bill a big edge in the writing business.” He looked over at me. “You white folks got funny ways.”

I ignored him and kept walking.

“Now what poetic meter did Billy use?”

“I am told that it was the iambic pentameter.”

“Precisely, Now tell me what modern form of music do you find most expressive, emotionally that is, and across the broadest spectrum of folks.”

It was a trick question and I knew it. “Maybe the Blues.”

“Maybe. Now what rhythm does it employ?”

“Iambic pentameter.”

He started singing: “This old man got a funny point to make ...”

“What?”

“This old man got a funny…”

“Cut that out, C.W.,” I snapped just as we met two tourists coming from the other direction. They scowled at me.

“Your species is real interested in finding a so-called “unified theory of the universe.”

“Yes, and?”

“Maybe it’s the iambic pentameter,” he stopped to study a sculpture of a boy and his grandfather heading off on a fishing trip. “Or maybe fishing.”


The Blues Rule!



“What on earth are you talking about and where did you learn to sing?”

“I’m talking about the tendency of your species to look for answers in all the wrong places,” he said as we walked on. “And I got my music abilities at the Crossroads.”





Editor's Note: C.W. wants me to remind everyone that the Arkansas Blues and Heritage Festival will take place in Helena-West Helena, Arkansas on October 7, 8, and 9, 2010. See www.bluesandheritagefest.com. He is threatening to appear on some street corner. I don't know.