Tag Archives: Music

Grab Some Afternoon Delight

There’s a new trend affecting today’s children – especially teens. It’s an anti-social attitude and behavior that’s rather shocking. I am not the first to notice it, but I am probably the wisest to comment on it. This belligerent attitude is reflected in the music young people listen to. Bands like The Rolling Stones (I can’t get no satisfaction”), The Clash (“Let fury have the hour, anger can be power/Do you know that you can use it?”), and The Cure (“Let’s go to bed”). This music is beginning to change how young people interact with their superiors. But the music is a symptom of the real issue. These children and teens have too much free time.

Having elegantly explained the problem, I will now artfully bring you the solution. Repeal child labor laws. Instead of allowing these children to watch MTV all day on their personal handheld devices, let’s put them to work. Then they would be too tired to be anti-social. Who knows? Our youth may start listening to wholesome music again. Musicians like Starland Vocal Band (“Gonna find my baby, gonna hold her tight/Gonna grab some afternoon delight”), Sheena Easton (“My baby takes the morning train”), and whoever sang “God save the Queen/we mean it, man”).

While we’re at it. We should also repeal minimum wage laws as well. We could hire a lot more children without those pesky laws. Plus, the government has no expertise in this arena. No one knows better than me and my business clients what your children are for and how much they’re worth.

Treacherous Gulp, Esquire – Counsel for Pungent Sound Technical College of Technology

Fair and Tender Ladies

Lee Smith drops an astute warning at the start of her enthralling Oral History. And though its directed at the ladies, anyone aiming to “court” young men should listen up.

Come all you fair and tender ladies
Be careful how you court young men.
They're like a star in a summer's morning,
First appear and they're gone.

That sets the tone for a story “that’s truer than true, and nothing so true is so pretty. It’s blood on the moon.” Yikes! I’m not sure fair and tender ladies and gentlemen are ready for this.

Jennifer is a college student who was raised by her father. She hardly remembers her mother. She’s working on a project for her Oral History class, and her professor (who clearly has taken some non-academic interest in her) has encouraged her to interview her mother’s family. She may learn something about herself in the process. Cool.

But is it? Jennifer’s mother was a Cantrell, and she grew up in Appalachia. Geez, Gladiola, that’s a huge territory in the eastern United States. Could you be more specific? OK, fine. The Cantrells have lived for generations in the most remote part of southwestern Virginia – the pointy nose part that sticks into Tennessee and Kentucky.

Not everyone is glad Jennifer has shown up. Her grandmother in particular is frosty. Wow. Grandma doesn’t sound like a fair and tender lady. She’s not. Perhaps it’s because she has spent most of her life in the shadows of Hoot Owl Mountain. It might be the “prettiest holler on God’s green earth” but there’s something about it that makes a “body lose heart.” Maybe it’s because that witch cursed it.

And let’s not forget. Jennifer may be family, but she’s also a “foreigner” – a term that “does not necessarily refer to someone from another country or even from another state, but simply to anybody who was not born” in that area of the county.

In Oral History Lee Smith tells a rollicking tale of four generations of Cantrells. It’s full of music, moonshine, laughter, tragedy, desperation, ghosts, and violence. There is poverty, hard times, and true grit. It’s also honest and loving. Appalachia has been stereotyped and ridiculed ever since foreigners have been telling its stories. Smith doesn’t do that. She knows the region well and has affection for it, but she does not gloss over its tortured history. Her characters are flawed and sometimes wicked, but they’re human.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor