![]() It lacked everything I wanted at the time. I kind of enjoyed the music, but more: I wanted people to think I enjoyed it. I started to believe my heart was begging for sophistication, wealth, and prestige. Moving into high school, I started to listen to worldly music of my own: classical music with hints of Nat King Cole and Dean Martin sprinkled in. But the hole looked an awful lot like my Grandpa. I think that’s when my mind started running, pursuing something my heart began to beg for. The part of him that wrote lyrics like:įast forward seven more years of me growing up and him singing, and I’m watching him have a stroke in the basement that he was turning into a mancave for us then a few more days and I’m staring at his casket. I would soon find myself acquainted with another part of Hank Williams. He was the first person I consciously loved. I believed everything that came from him. Why not believe that? Why not believe that the man who told me the reason his stomach was so hard when I punched his gut was because he, a brick mason, ate a brick at work, would also make up lyrics like “Today I tried to eat a steak with a big old tablespoon/You got me chasing rabbits, walkin' on my hands, and howlin' at the Moon?” I sincerely believed everything else he told me when I was six years old, anyway. I suppose I sincerely believed he made them all up. I suppose that was because the lyrics were always so silly, so foolish, and Grandpa acted like a silly fool himself. Not once did I ever think to ask Grandpa what he was singing, either. But lyrics to “Jambalaya,” “Cool Water,” and “Lovesick Blues” serenaded my Grandpa’s modest, Mamou outdoor kitchen like the Gumbo he was cooking saturated the air, or permeated the thin forest of the bayou where we were fishing like the Kingfisher’s song rattled off the cypress trees in winter. So I never listened to Hank while growing up. He then raised my father in the Pentecostal faith, who, in turn, raised my three brothers and me in it as well. He just played the harmonica, yodeled (quite badly, but with good humor), and sang while cooking, fishing, or working. I don’t think he could even play the guitar. He was far too proud for those sorts of things-his brother had also drowned himself in liquor. Not at local taverns or honky-tonks, mind you. He never escaped the world, though, and I reckon that’s why he kept singing. ![]() ![]() So, Grandpa eventually came around to giving up all worldly music. In any event, the Pentecostal Church has quite the Puritan streak.
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