Country Music Broke My Brain

by Gerry House

  But back to the turkey dinner. Thanksgiving morning in Kentucky is the same every year. It’s gray and cold outside. The ground is partially frozen. When you walk in the woods, things crack beneath your steps, and crows are always bickering somewhere in the distance. You pack some semblance of a suitcase and load up the car for the trip to Grandma’s. Dad is already talking about how great dinner is going to be. One last Winston before Dad and Mom and I head down toward Falmouth, Kentucky. I fasted with only a bowl of Cheerios to make sure I had room for the feast. We were gonna arrive a little early, about two in the chilly afternoon, for a little visit, a few stories, and then down to serious drumstick business.

  In that little farmhouse, the walls were so thin we could hear music in the driveway. The fireplace was smoking, and Grandma was in the kitchen. The stove turned Grandma’s kitchen into a sauna. Yes, it was so hot in the kitchen that I couldn’t stand the heat. So, like Truman, I stayed out.

  The important thing was staking out an area at the big table. I’d been to many a family gathering and had been relegated to the card table—a flimsy foldout eating deal where the “kids” sat. This meant the drumsticks were long gone before the turkey was doled out to the card table ghetto. Not this year. I was already placing markers in front of the chair at the big table.

  Time began to slow as I got hungrier. I politely spoke to my cousins. Girls who didn’t know about anything that I wanted to discuss: baseball cards, crawdads, drumsticks. Grandpa did his Speech of Impending Doom for some of the newest little critters in the family. It had to be close to dinnertime. It was getting near three o’clock, and I’d heard stories of young boys dying of starvation in foreign countries because dinner was not served on time at Thanksgiving.

  I finally decided to take matters into my own hands, hoping to get a sneak at ol’ Tom in the furnace/kitchen. I braced for the heat and started the conversation. “Grandma? How’s the turk-a-lurk [my mother’s phrase] coming along? We about ready to sit down?”

  Here is where I think I learned about life and expectations. It still scars me to this day to have been informed with the hideousness and unfeeling treatment of gray-haired relatives. I have never fully recovered from the disappointment we call the future. Grandma delivered the fatal blow. “Oh, hi, sweetie darlin’. The turkey? Oh, I don’t think he’s quite ready for the table yet.”

  I’m pretty sure she laughed a mocking laugh—the one people do in front of those who don’t know what they know. Vicious, evil, bun-wearing mockers.

  “Come here, honey. Look out Grandma’s window. See? See? He’s right there.”

  I stood on the kitchen chair she pulled up for me. I peered through the steamed-up window. There, doing quite a strut, was Tom T. Turkey. He was still alive! It was a world gone mad. How could a turkey, filled with stuffing and gravy and using the drumsticks I was assigned to share, be walking around in the yard? For the love of all that’s holy, how?

  I ran screaming from the room to warn everyone of the upcoming famine. People of Earth, the end is near! I ran straight into the parlor and saw my father. He had moved my chair to the card table, along with my “markers,” and said, “Hey, Hoss. Come on over here and have a baloney sandwich. Your Grandma says this year we’re eatin’ at a decent hour like rich folks do. Supper ain’t on ’til seven.” He acted like he didn’t understand the tragedy that was breaking out all around us. The poor man was oblivious to dying of starvation. Baloney would only prolong the inevitable. We were all going to die. Except for Tom, who let out a mocking gobble and flew on top of the root cellar.

  Italians Do It Every Night

  IF I CAN QUOTE Hank Snow again, “I’ve Been Everywhere.” Of course, not everywhere, but pretty close. I think travel is the best education that you can have. That’s why we’ve dragged our daughter, Autumn, around the world and back: England, Egypt, Japan, France, China, Italy, Morocco, and Cincinnati, Ohio, to name just a few stops. Seeing other cultures and learning to navigate a strange land makes you a better person. Autumn is a fabulously better person.

  I also like to see places. I can spend up to fifteen minutes in a museum. I can sit in the front of a Parisian café for five hours. Museums need better wine and waiter service, I think. I could appreciate looking at old broken vases and Victorian chastity belts a lot longer if I had a glass of wine—and a little scooter wouldn’t be a bad idea, either.

  Al is a reader of little white signs—you know, the little white information cards next to the picture of a guy sitting on a horse with dwarves frolicking around. She wants to know who painted the picture and what the horse’s name is. I’m generally through the museum by the time she’s figured out how to operate that little tourist guide thingy they give you to explain it all—the thing you hold up to your ear and some guy tells you what century the thing you’re looking at was discovered. I’ve spent most of my life waiting for her to come out of some museum or dungeon.

  I thought I might give you some international travel tips. If you like country music, take your own along because it’s not on the local FM stations in Italy or China. In China, by the way, they play Country & Eastern music. Although country does pop up in the weirdest places. We were in a taxi on our way out to the Great Pyramids in Egypt, and heard Merle Haggard singing “Mama Tried” on the radio.

  I always think of Dolly whenever I visit the Great Pyramids. I don’t know why, I just do. They’re enormous. The pyramids, that is. Every single guy in Egypt has a cousin who rents camels, and they all insist you ride a damn camel for awhile. It’s fun . . . once. After that, trying to do anything involves telling the taxi driver you do not want to ride a camel to go to your hotel.

  Allyson and I still say one of the most exciting sights we’ve ever seen were the giant wooden doors as you walk out of the Cairo airport. We weren’t ready for the culture shock. You stand behind the doors, and they open onto total chaos. Nobody pays any attention to traffic lights. People are praying on mats beside the road. Camels are available for hire to take you to your bus. You’re surrounded by teeming masses of humanity. It’s like stepping into a life-size beehive.

  You should also be forewarned that the fabulous exotic Great Pyramids of Giza, the three famous monoliths in the desert, are not as exotic as you thought. You always see them photographed from the front. If you took a picture from the other side, you’d see the Holiday Inn and Taco Bell about a half-mile away. The actual pyramids are amazing. Being from Nashville and in the music business, I can only imagine how many roadies it took to set these things up. As you read this, Egypt is probably not safe enough to visit. I know I’m glad I went, but I was happy to leave. Walking around with two blondes and a big American face is like strolling around at Talladega in a tuxedo. You tend to stick out a bit.

  If you do decide to risk it, take a side trip to Luxor, the Valley of the Kings. I know Steve Martin visited there, because King Tut is buried there. King Tut was the Toby Keith of his day. The temperature at Luxor is usually around 146 degrees. No rain, and the sun is brutal. It’s like the old days at Fan Fair at the Nashville Fairgrounds. And just like Fan Fair, the only word you need to know is baksheesh. When somebody has his or her hand out for a tip, a favor, a drink, or a bribe, that’s baksheesh. I’m used to it because I am in radio and the music business. I’m used to somebody needing something to get something done. It’s an art form in Egypt. Did I mention that you can also take a camel ride on the way to the airport?

  My wife is relentlessly cheerful, as I’ve said a hundred times. It’s just so irritating to be with someone who is always happy and says things that make you bend over laughing. I deserve a medal, don’t I? On vacays, it’s my job to plan the hotels, the itinerary, and most important, where we eat. I love it. I can spend hours on the computer before any trip, reading reviews of restaurants and hotels that used to be nunneries. We were in Rome having a glorious time when I noticed a tragedy in my schedule. I confessed to Allyson, “I made a drastic error in restaurant schedules. Tonight’s designa
ted dinner stop will mark the third evening in a row that we have rezzies at an Italian restaurant.” I don’t know what I was thinking. It was a glaring misstep of epic proportions.

  Her reply? “No problem, hon. The Italians do it every night.”

  Me: “Do what every night?”

  Her: “Have Italian for dinner. I bet they go for months before they have anything but Italian, ’cause they’re Italian. Imagine how many nights they have Japanese in Japan.”

  We had Italian that night, and it was fabulous. She was right.

  Speaking of Japan, it was tough. Tokyo and the lights and the sights were amazing. The Ginza shopping district makes Times Square look like Dothan, Alabama. The Japanese really like their buildings covered in advertising. I warn you, however, these people are serious about their language. You can go for days and not find a person who speaks anything but Japanese. There are a few printed signs, but overall it’s full-frontal Japan. If you’re jet-lagged, as we were, and wake up at three thirty in the morning, go to Tsukiji. It’s the fish market and the source of all the seafood eaten every day by the people of Tokyo. We got up, dressed, and caught a taxi that took us to the most amazing collection of things from the sea I’d even seen. It’s enormous and it’s squiggly. I once had sushi with Jeff Cook of Alabama, who explained all about raw fish to me. Jeff Cook is from Ft. Payne and not Shinjuku. He has not a clue what real sushi is. It’s businessmen at a counter eating from a plate of live, squirming eels. It’s things served as a delicacy that look like they fell off a garbage truck. Japanese cuisine is seeeeaaaafood. It’s the Patsy Cline of raw fish. We once walked thirty blocks because we saw an arrow pointing to a McDonald’s. I’m not sure what was in that Big Mac, but it was a welcome relief.

  We also got treated like dirt in Japan. Because we bombed them, I realize they can be a little ticklish. But they started it. We finished it. Neither my father nor Allyson’s dad had one little good thing to say about the Japanese. You get years ripped out of your life to float around on a ship (which they both did) because the “Japs attacked us,” and you don’t like certain folks. The Japanese didn’t like us, either.

  Sometimes, when I hear the word “discrimination” bandied about, I think back to a ritzy, steel-and-glass, upscale dining place in Ginza, the posh neighborhood of Tokyo. This was probably my only time of truly being treated differently because of what color my skin was and what nationality I looked like.

  My family—Allyson, Autumn, and I—entered and took a seat at one of the lovely tables. We waited for service, which was a little slow. Waiters sauntered by and looked elsewhere. Probably the language barrier. After a long wait, I finally waved at one of the servers and mimed we wanted to order. He just stared and walked on. Suddenly, it began to occur to me we were being ignored! We weren’t getting slow service, we were getting no service. Our reaction was a slow burn. This just doesn’t happen to us. You have to wait on people, it’s a restaurant, for cryin’ out loud. It’s quite an awakening to realize you are about as welcome as a banjo at the symphony.

  We walked as slowly as we could out of there. We weren’t offended (that’s a lie; we were P.O.’d as hell), and nonchalantly moseyed our little old American butts out the door. Stupid restaurant. We didn’t want to eat there anyway. It’s the only time in my life this has ever happened to me. I can’t imagine if that was the regular routine, if you had to wonder if somebody would let you eat at their counter. It would make you rage at the world. You’d be Toby Keith.

  The massive area was lit by burning oil lanterns. As the sun was setting, the flames cast an eerie, spooky glow over the square. As your eyes adjusted, you noticed monkeys on leashes, bears asleep on rugs, tables filled with snails, and piles of goat brains. People were drinking and laughing and fighting. You noticed a man having a tooth pulled by someone with his leg on the patient’s stomach. Strange music floated through the evening heat. Men looked at you with blank stares as if they wanted to either shake hands or pull a giant knife out of their sack. Bladders of wine were hoisted toward the sky and shared by the crowd. A woman gave a greasy character with no teeth a haircut. Steel griddles were covered in shrimp that danced as the oil heated beneath them. A shout in the distance, and somebody held up a steaming animal leg.

  Yes, it looked exactly like the tailgate before an Eric Church concert. Exactly.

  Or, it could be you’ve walked into the Djemaa El Fna. The open-air market/restaurant/mall/pub/farmer’s market/dentist’s office/barbershop/yard sale of Marrakech, Morocco. I’ve been backstage at a lot of Eric Church concerts, so this place wasn’t a total shock to me. It was still a bizarre bazaar anyway. During the day in Marrakech, you see women totally wrapped in rich, black cloth. Allyson says she still remembers locking eyes for a moment with a woman with only a slit in the traditional chador for her to see. It wasn’t confrontational or angry, just one person sizing up another. Travel does that to you. You realize, underneath it all, humans are basically the same everywhere. People with families and jobs trying to make it to five o’clock and get home to feed the kids.

  I always asked a driver or guide, when I heard some music, what the song was about. The melodies were intricate and nothing Dierks Bentley would record, but the subject was the same: a love gone wrong, a story about a hardworking man who didn’t get what he deserved, or riding your camel into the desert for some privacy or a party. It might as well have been something by Jason Aldean—the Moroccan version of “Big Green Tractor.”

  I still get a chill thinking of nights in Morocco. The air is warm and filled with incense. Women and men, covered head to toe, move like ghosts as the wind whips at them and they disappear into invisible doors and twisting alleyways. And there ain’t a Cracker Barrel for 10,000 miles.

  The French and country stars of the ’60s and ’70s have a lot in common. They drink like fish. They smoke like chimneys. They do what they want and couldn’t care less what people think of them. Ray Price could have been French.

  It’s not as bad in Paris today as it was the first time I went to the City of Lights. Back then, everybody smoked—the men, the women, the babies, and the dogs. You would see nannies puffing away, pushing a stroller with a pint-sized Parisian, lighting up a Gauloises. The French also don’t care what they eat. If at one time it was part of an animal, then fire up the grill, Pierre, dinner’s comin’!

  I think it’s hilarious that there is a “Country Music Association” in France. The thought of François in a cowboy hat singing “All My Exes Live in Toulouse” is just funny to me. I’ve discovered over the years in the music business that a lot of American artists claim to be “big” in Europe. They can’t get arrested in the States, but somehow people in Provence love their music. It might be true, but I’m just sayin’ I don’t think Alan Jackson is planning a tour de France anytime soon.

  The one thing I love about Paris is the showbiz look of that city. I once was seated beside a lovely man on a flight from Paris to London. I couldn’t help but notice he was reading a lot of letters with the heading “Directeur de la Lumiere.” In the worst French possible, I asked him what that was. It looked to me like “Director of Light.” It was Director of Light. He explained to me in flawless, accented English that his job was to make sure everybody in Paris looked good at night. It ain’t called the City of Light for nothing. His mission was to put a golden glow on couples walking along the Seine or sitting in a small café with a glass of Sauvignon blanc. Why, it’s just like the Grand Ole Opry with berets. The Opry gives you a special spotlight, and so does France.

  A few times I’ve been scared traveling. Once when the girls and I were lost behind the city wall in Luxor, the stares from guys sitting on their haunches were creepy. We were also stopped by a hotel manager from wandering too far down a road near our hotel in the Valley of the Kings. He just shook a finger at us and said, “No, no. You no go. Very dangerous that way.” It looked almost exactly like a backcountry road in Tennessee or Kentucky . . . lush and green and almost romantic
but probably precarious. We took his advice.

  St. Petersburg, Russia, was the worst. It’s a beautiful city with churches that take your breath away. The Hermitage is a stunning collection of artifacts and paintings in a building founded by Catherine the Great in the 1700s. If you wanted to look at all 3 million exhibits, it would take untold years. Allyson would still be there today, on the second floor, reading about some lamp. When we were in Russia, it was more like the Wild West. It’s been years, but I still get the willies thinking about that city. We walked past stores with such opulence and then passed a poor Russian squatting on the sidewalk, with a single head of lettuce for sale.

  We had a young guide named Olga. I think there’s a national law that young, blonde guides in Russia be named Olga. She was a terrific guide, but there was a sadness about her I never could get my head around. I always imagined she left us and returned to a gray apartment in the shakier part of town.

  I asked Olga to take us to Nevsky Prospect. It’s the Fifth Avenue of St. Petersburg. She acted like it wasn’t all that great an idea but agreed to lead us into the crowds. What happened next is so typical and so scary at the same time. Young gangs of Russian boys gathered around Allyson and Autumn shoving sweatshirts for sale into their faces. They held items up high and babbled on about how we should buy them.

  Al finally had enough and shouted, “No!” Just as suddenly as the throngs of young street vendors had appeared, they were gone. They just disappeared, like Dave and Sugar. Olga stood in front of us and was a little wobbly. Then we noticed what she knew had happened. They were pickpockets. Allyson had kept our passports in a little leather bag she wore on the front of her belt. It was unzipped and empty.