January 2003
In the course of a month there’s often a day that sums up and defines its tenor. This January 2003, that day was the first of February.
On Friday, January 31st, Sue and I drove from Asheville eight hours out to Carbondale, Illinois to play at Cousin Andy’s. The next morning we sat in Vern Crawford’s living room with bagels and coffee working out a mandolin tune when Vern came in and informed us that the Space Shuttle had gone down over Texas. On that somber note we departed Carbondale and drove south toward Blytheville, Arkansas. Along the way we took a detour into Cairo.
Cairo (pron. Kayro) lies at the southern-most tip of Illinois where the Ohio River flows into the Mississippi. Visiting Cairo had been on my mind since hearing a Norman Blake fiddle tune, called the Cairo Waltz. The tune is high and slow and sad and lonesome. Cairo is the same, and is as close to a ghost town as I’ve ever seen a formerly big city be. We wove through the downtown blocks marveling at the grand three story buildings built during the time when riverboats paddled the waters, and cotton money flowed. Structures of grand and elaborate architecture stand with windows gone, beams exposed, and paint peeling off ornate pressed tin. Bricks lay in forgotten heaps in vacant lots behind buildings where one can see sagging roofs behind the façades and staircases leading up to floors that are no longer there. Floods and poor economics have ravaged Cairo, but the town seems to hang on by a thread of southern dignity. New brick paves the Main Street, and long strips of lighter colored stone mark the path of where trolley car rails used to be.
From Cairo we crossed the Mississippi, and rambled south across floodplain and cotton fields. We drove through the boot-heel of Missouri which was created unintentionally by a farmer who when the states were taking shape refused to consider his farm part of Arkansas so Missouri annexed it. At least that’s the story I heard.
Just into Arkansas off of I-55 is the town of Blytheville. “That Bookstore In Blytheville” is an oasis in the cultural desert of that part of the country. David and Susanna Walls run the O’Susannah Concert Series there, and are both teachers in the High School and Community College. They do a unique thing with their concerts: to bolster attendance they encourage their students to attend the shows for extra school credits. This is not something the kids would normally be inclined to do.
I take it for granted that I grew up in the years before attention spans were diminished by MTV and sound bites. America has raised an entire generation of youth who do not know to applaud at the end of a song, or to have an attention span long enough to sit through a concert. Part of why David and Susanna run this series is to subject their students to a live concert setting. I was both gratified and challenged to sing for the students in attendance in Blytheville. Besides a couple of young girls that were sending text messages to each other during my songs, they seemed to be getting it. Appreciation of acoustic music is learned thing. Thanks David and Susannah!
The lines between months blur, and by the time Sue and I arrived home in Asheville it was already February second and almost time to turn around to go to Nashville to the Folk Alliance. I’ll save that story for the next Notes From The Road.
Keep in touch. Please sign my guestbook, and let me know what you’re up to. That’s what all this is for.
Happy New Year!
Dana