Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
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8 UCW MARCH 8 - 14, 2023 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM PITT DICKEY, Columnist. COMMENTS? Editor@upandcomingweek- ly.com. 910-484-6200. OPINION Are you troubled? Confused? Drinking too much? Your Magic Eight Ball lost its Mojo? No worries. You have come to the right page. To- day we explore the wonderful world of country music wherein one can find the answers to life's mysteries. I have been listening to country music so you don't have to. Our country station has a rota- tion of about 15 songs that repeat endlessly. Within those songs, lies the wisdom of the ages. e songs focus on economics, lost and found love, pickup trucks, and drinking. Pon- der the immortal lyrics of Merle Haggard who sang: "It's a big job just getting by with nine kids and a wife/ But I've been a working man dang near all my life." Merle is not complain- ing. He gets up and goes to work. He is not concerned about his feelings. He just wants to feed his family. A current song examines money troubles with the lines: "If the Devil danced in empty pockets/ He'd have a ball in mine." Another song combines the Protestant work ethic with parental love, pointing out that "Hard work won't kill you but her Daddy will." A chrono- logically gifted worker sings: "I ain't old/ I've just been used rough." Country music offers sound advice regard- ing love. Lost love is a most favored topic: "In the corner of my mind stands a juke box/ It's playing all my favorite memories." Another ditty goes: "It's a little too late/ She's a little too gone/ She's a little too right/ I'm a little too wrong." Another poor fellow: "Lost my wife and my girlfriend somewhere along the way/ Amarillo by morning." A footloose lovelorn dude sings: "ere's just one place I haven't gone/ I've moved everywhere but on." Country singers are resilient, a fellow who lost his wife sings: "I ain't got to see my ex-future Mother-in-Law anymore." A gent who is fed up with the ladies and romantic issues sings: "e only BS I need is Beer and Sunshine." Hit the beach! It's not just men who lose love. Ladies feel heartache too. One lady person sings: "I got a heart like a truck/ It's been dragged through the muck/ Runs on dreams and gasoline." e lady has been knocked down but she pops back up. Another gal reminds her errant boyfriend that : "I'm every thing she is and every thing she ain't." Truck references abound. One guy sings: "Got your picture up in my new pickup truck." Another fellow has to sell his pickup because it housed too many memories of his lost baby doll. He sings: "I need a new truck/ I need one she ain't climbed up in/ at ain't played her favorite song/ Need some glass we ain't fogged up/ at her bare feet ain't been on." A vigilante truck song is "Wait in the Truck." A driver picks up a battered woman hitch hiking in the rain. He finds out where the old boyfriend lives and drives there to shoot him. He tells her to "Wait in the truck/ Well, I knocked and knocked and no one came/ So I kicked in his double wide door/ I let the hammer drop before he got/ To that 12 gauge he was reaching for." She comes to visit him in prison from time to time so it's a happy ending for everyone except the dead guy. New found love brings happier days: "Last night you took my breath away/ And I ain't found it yet." Another song deals with lust delicately: "Your body makes me weak/ You are a Mozart between the sheets." A gentle- man swaddled in the coils of new love sings: 'I thought of love as a prison/ A place I did not want to be/ I'm guilty of love in the first degree." Touching. A guy with a new gal sings: "Every time you kiss me/ It's like sunshine and whiskey." Another guy uses a great pickup line: "I can take the blue out of your brown eyes." A one-night stand is saluted: "By the dark of the moon/ ere's a fire in the night." Occasionally love reaches the point he wants to get married so he sings: "You name the babies/ I'll name the dogs." Touching romanticism. Alcohol is big in country music. One fellow sings about his gal when she gets a snootful: "Tequila makes her clothes fall off." Another guy who is a dumpee sings: "Here I go again/ I'm drinking one/ I'm drinking two/ I got my heartache medication/ Tear drops turn into bubbles." A wife whose husband has a drinking problem sings: "Whiskey, if you were a woman/ I'd drive you from his tangled mind for good." Unfortu- nately, whiskey wins out. It is generally acknowledged that the perfect country song was written by Steve Goodman and sung by the Mysterious Rhinestone Cowboy, David Allen Coe with the immortal lyrics: "I was drunk the day my Mama got out of prison/ And I went to pick her up in the rain/ But before I could get to the station in my pickup truck/ She got ran over by a damned old train." Sadder words have never been warbled. Mr. Goodman, I salute you. Life is just a bowl of country music by PITT DICKEY make your Radio sound funny. Mornings 6am to 10am on WFAY. Bud & Broadway Country music lyrics share the wisdom of the ages: love, loss, trucks, dogs, and evidently, inebriation. (Hand-drawn illustration by Pitt Dickey)