Dating Your Mom by Ian Frazier

Author:Ian Frazier
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2012-08-09T04:00:00+00:00

JUST A COUNTRY BOY

If you think that when you look at me you’re looking at rock, rhythm and blues, jazz, classical, or pop, then you are wrong, because I am country from my head down to my boots. If you’re looking at me, then by definition you are looking at country. When I was in my early teens, the great Hank Williams told me, “Son, you ain’t country unless you’ve looked at a lot of miles over the back end of a mule.” Unfortunately, because of conflicts in my schedule at the time, I did not have a chance to look at as many miles over the back end of a mule as I would have liked to. Hank, however, made some excellent videotapes of miles with the back end of a mule in the foreground, and I spent countless hours screening those tapes.

Excuse me. That’s my phone.

Sorry. That was the lonesome highway calling me. It calls me just about every day at this time. Just about every day, I get calls from the lonesome highway, the gentle Southern summer breezes, my Smoky Mountain memories, and that lonesome freight-train whistle’s whine. If I’m not in, they leave messages. I don’t mind all these calls, because they remind me that I’m just a country boy and that’s all I’ll ever be. (Although sometimes that lonesome freight-train whistle’s whine can be a little irritating. I pick up the phone and all I hear is this whine.)

I like it when the lonesome highway calls, because for a long time it has been my only friend. I don’t know exactly why I always keep moving on down the road. One reason might be that I’ve got a different girl in every town you can name. There’s a Cajun Queen down in Baton Rouge who usually tries to avoid me. And in North Dallas there’s a rich man’s daughter who says she doesn’t like me that much. In old San Antone there’s a dark-eyed senorita who didn’t have a very good time with me, while up in Memphis there are several Tennessee belles whose feelings toward me are lukewarm at best. I tell them all the same thing: “I am not the kind of man to hang around with any one woman for too long, because I am always chasing rainbows. So please bear that in mind.” That is not an easy thing to tell someone (particularly if you have to yell it through her locked door), but I know myself well enough to say that it is nothing more or less than the simple truth.

I am country today, and I was country this time last year—I have photographs to prove it. I was country back before Hollywood brought Texas to New York and imitation drugstore cowboys turned up all over the Sunset Strip. I was country in ’80, ’79, ’78, ’77, ’76 —it doesn’t matter how far back you want to go. I was country when country wasn’t cool. In fact, I was country

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