A Walk Down a Country Lane

I really don't like new country music. I think it has gotten so far from its roots as to be unrecognizable. Too pop, too glam. But give me good old country music and I'm happy.

I grew up going with my parents to taverns. (In Southern Illinois

we say "taverns," not "bars.") My mother was 

too afraid to take me out of the house before I was six months old because she thought I'd get some horrible disease, but the minute I turned six months, out I went with them.

We lived two doors down from their usual hangout, the Broadway Tavern,

 and went there every Friday and

 Saturday night – maybe on Wednesday and Sunday, too. They never left me with a babysitter; I was taken along every time. Sometimes we'd go to the Heidelberg, sometimes to Gherdini's, sometimes to the Elk's Club or Meyers' Tavern.

Beef jerky and beer nuts were food staples to me. I liked chocolate soda or a Shirley Temple if I was feeling grown-up. I had my run of the place when we went to the Broadway. I could walk all around, maybe go in the back to the storeroom

 where some of the guys played cards. I was fascinated with the old pictures on the wall of the Broadway's old days and the collection of hundreds of shaped Jim

 Beam bottles along the top of the walls in their lighted glass cases.

There was always country music playing. When they had me, my mom was 38 and my dad was 50, so they ran with an older crowd. They loved country music from the '30s on. I learned to love the music, the accents and the twang.

When we'd have people over, there were a couple of albums that got played over and over while everyone was drinking beer and I was running tipboards. A tipboard is a gambling device where people pay to peel off a folded and sealed batch of tickets for the chance to get the winning number. Not legal and probably not a great idea to have a 7-year-old running it. But that's my life.

Some of the music that was always playing is from my absolute favorite country album. It's a variety album with the snappy name of "Famous Original Hits by 25 Great Country Music Artists." Everybody's on there, starting with Roy Acuff and the "Wabash Cannonball" to Lefty Frizzell and "If You've Got the Money, Honey (I've Got the Time)," to Buck Owens with "Act Naturally." It's just a fabulous lineup of the great old stars and their original hits and I've never found another country album to rival it.

Later on they put out a follow-up to it, called "Country Hall of Fame, Vol. 2." Not exactly the same name as the first, but I guess they figured that's what everyone would call it. It's got another good lineup, but definitely secondary to the first. Even with that said, there was Roger Miller (love him!) with "Dang Me," Ray Price doing "City Lights," and Flatt & Scruggs with "Foggy Mountain Special."

As you can see, I still have the albums. They are my treasures. I only wish I could find them on CD. Not likely, but I'm always looking.