Domingo 22 Nov 2009, 17h:12

Yes, I realize I have a bad habit of writing about my own playlists. This is not an explanation, so much as it is something I just have to get out there.

I'm homesick.

My parents live 4 1/2 hours from here, as does my brother and his family, which includes my two gorgeous nieces.

It's Thanksgiving here this week. I cannot get away due to work obligations and some stuff I'm going through personally. I have listened to John Anderson's "Seminole Wind" and Alan Jackson's "Midnight in Montgomery" so much I can't get the free ones anymore, so I'm gonna have to break bad with the plastic, which I already need to break bad with to get myself some fresh ink slung on my ugly ol' hide.

But anyways. . . .

A lot of the stuff on "Southern Comfort" is stuff I haven't heard in ages, or it's stuff I listened to back in the early 90s, when I was still in college and working at a local restaurant. The owners were a local, no-nonsense, no-bullshit, deeply Southern, church-going couple named Kenny and Ruth, and Kenny's sister, Alice, made the world's best pies. Don't tell me about how your mother is a wonderful pie-baker. My grandmother was also a wonderful pie-baker, as is my mother. Even my mom will tell you, Alice's pies were the best pies ever, hands-down. Ruth used to come back into the kitchen when all of us "young'uns" were working, and she's say, "C'mere, babe, an' lemme show ye how y'orta cut dis hyar piiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii." So here's how Ruth did it:

One large cut down the middle, one large cut across, and ONE (yes just ONE) cut diagonally. If Ruth caught you cutting another diagonal, she'd threaten to fire you.

The second summer I worked there was the year Billy Ray Cyrus's "Achy Breaky Heart" debuted. I hated that song. I still hate that song. That was also the year Kenny and Ruth updated their juke box in the dining room. We had always played old Hank, Hank, Jr., and lots of older country with a little bit of Elvis and Gene Vincent thrown in, but that was the summer Kenny decided to give ol' Billy Ray a "listen-at," to put it in local terms. He also had "Seminole Wind," "Midnight in Montgomery," and a funnier, less popular Billy Ray song added in there, "Where'm I Gonna Live (When I Get Home)". We also had to put up with the likes of Shania Twain, and Jennifer and Melanie and Bessie and I all demanded more Dolly Parton. DEMANDED more Dolly.

Everyone was scared to death of Ruth but me. I adored Ruth. Ruth wore her hair in this old, high, 50s style dyed-jet-black bee-hive, wore bright red lipstick that stained all our cups, and played Bingo. She won a lot, too. She smoked unfliltered Camels, just like her husband Kenny, and was known for saying, when people would question or scoff at her smoking habit, "Smoke and drink and carousin' ain't what'll kill ye. Hit's livin' what's dun 't."

She's right.