The Collegian

Issue date: 3/12/09 Section: Arts

Media Credit: Betsy Woodruff

I was born and raised in a cabin up off Green Stick Branch, near the geyser at Old Fort. When I was a boy, a tree fell on my pappy. After that, he was short and angry. But if he was mean, my mama was meaner yet. She said she whupped me just to keep in shape; she was always trying to trim herself up some. So I stayed away in the woods most days, humming to myself and chasing squirrels. When I was ten, I carved a banjo out of a old stump and began writing songs. The first I remember was called "Gravy in My Hair," about the time my pappy poured some gravy in my hair. Maybe you've heard the refrain:

Before we got to eatin',
Before we said the prayer,
My pappy sat and looked at me.
All he did was stare.
And then he started smilin'
Just like he didn't care.
And then he took the gravy up
And poured it in my hair.

I wrote a couple others like it, including a personal favorite, "Porkchops in My Pockets, Taters in My Socks."

When I was twelve, my grandpappy was sent to Central Prison in Raleigh for making and selling moonshine. When he come back home, he was a different man; he'd got religion. First thing he did was start hisself a church. He was the preacher, and the rest of us family was the congregation. It's about those times that I wrote my song, "That Must Be a Serpent. This Must Be a Church." You know how it goes.

Mama wore a rattler
Like a hat upon her head,
And I saw a cobra hangin'
Off the neck of Cousin Fred.

Pappy waved two coral snakes,
Sis flung away her meds,
And me, I made a necktie
From a four foot copperhead.

Well, anyway, there's sixteen more verses, but I won't bore you with all that. I wrote a few others at about the same time: "Casseroles and Strychnine," about a pot luck we had there once; and one about the pure-T joy of being in the Spirit. That's called "Rocket."

Chorus:
Put your hands on the stove
And put your finger in a socket,
Then gargle down some poison
And be a three-stage spirit rocket!

Don't place your hope in Buddha,
Don't place your hope in Aten,
Don't place your hope in Krishna,
In Allah or George Patton!

Chorus

Don't put your trust in Calvin,
Don't put your trust Wesley,
Don't put your trust in Luther,

Continued...

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