An Old Cubs Fan

I've been a Cubs fan since about 1993.

Watching my team win the NLDS on Tuesday night, made me think back to a time in July of 1955 when I was 15 years old. Our family visited my Dad's sister and her husband who lived on Long Island in NY.

I don't remember much about that trip, but one thing stands out -- one night we saw the Cubs play the Dodgers at Ebbets field. I was excited to see the Brooklyn Dodgers and all their stars that I'd only seen on baseball cards up till then, stars like Roy Campanella, Pee Wee Reese, Gil Hodges, Jackie Robinson, and Duke Snider. Campanella hit 32 home runs that year, and Hodges 27. Baseball's royalty, the Duke, hit 42. The Dodgers were in the middle of a great season in July of 1955, which culminated that fall in their winning the World Series against the New York Yankees.

I was pretty much a Yankee fan in those days (there was no southern major league team in those days and the Yankees got a lot of national press coverage -- I read about them daily in both the Tennessean and the Nashville Banner), but even the Nashville papers had plenty of stories about the Cubs new shortstop, Ernie Banks, who was Rookie of the Year runner up in 1954. He continued his slugging in '55 as well and ended up that year with 44 home runs.

I don't remember much about the game, just the feeling I got when we came up the ramp and saw the field. Ebbets Field! The Major Leagues! It was one of the biggest thrills of my young life. We sat on the lower deck somewhere on the third base side. The Cubs probably lost the game (the Dodgers beat them more than anyone else that year, winning 14 out of 21 games), I do know from checking the stats that the Cubs lost the only July series they played at Ebbets Field that year. They finished 6th that year with a record of 72 wins and 81 losses and one tie (I'm guessing that was a rained out tie that didn't get made up).

I didn't become a Cubs fan at that point, but I did follow them some over the years. Beginning in the '70s, like lots of other Americans, I became a quasi fan of Ted Turners "America's Team," the Atlanta Braves. Most of the time the Braves weren't that good but you could watch most of their games on TV.

But in '93 I switched my allegiance to the Cubs. We had a big dish in those days and we got WGN. Many Cubs games were televised so I began to watch them. I remembered my trip to Ebbets Field in 1955 and became a loyal fan. I enjoyed watching players like Mark Grace, Sammy Sosa, and Ryan Sandberg, and WGN's colorful play by play announcer Harry Caray made the games fun. They finished 4th in the NL East that year.

So, I haven't been a suffering "lovable loser" Cubs fan my whole life, just for the past 22 years.

During those years, the city of Chicago itself has spiraled downward (they're 3 times deeper in debt than the city of Detroit was) and the whole state is so far in debt they can't pay their lottery winners.

But this post is about their financial woes. It's not a political post.

It's about baseball. And finally getting into the NL Championship Series feels great. "Hey Chicago, let's play two!" Two videos.

First, Eddie Vedder's tribute, "All the Way."

Now, The CrackerJack Music Video, an entrant in the Tribune contest.

THEY PLAY THE METS TONIGHT IN THE FIRST GAME OF THE NLCS. GO CUBS!

S. O. B.'s: The Three Types

In 2012, Alan Jackson released a new single, "You Don't Have to Love Me Anymore," penned by songwriters Jay Knowles and Adam Wright. The knockout line for most folks was "I'll be the S. O. B." in the first verse.

This great song was included on Jackson's album Thirty Miles West that same year.

IMHOP there are at least three kinds of S. O. B. -- (1) the person who consistently by his deeds and words is a true S. O. B., (2) the person who makes a stupid mistake that hurts someone or a group, and (3) the person who deliberately plays the role of S. O. B. to get something done.

(1) First, there's the real, authentic S. O. B.  Most of us have known a few. They might be in our family or maybe we worked for them or with them. But they're pretty good at disguises and deception so some of them go into politics. :-)  I don't think I personally belong in this category (although I know a few people who might disagree).

(2) As for category 2, I guess most of us have done or said something stupid a few times in our lives. I know I have, and I still remember and regret those times today. I've made some mistakes, said some stupid things that hurt someone. I can't go back and erase those things, all I can do now is accept my mistake and hope for forgiveness.

(3) At other times a person plays the role of S. O. B. in order to do a job. I'm thinking for example of the executive or administrator who because of circumstances has to fire someone, or of the military TI who has to discipline a recruit, etc. I've been in this category at least a couple of times, but it was over fifteen years ago, so the statue of limitations has probably run out.

The narrator in Jackson's song fits in this category as well. He's willing to play the S. O. B. role if it will make his lady's life easier after their breakup. The Knowles/Wright lyric is simple and unadorned, but emotionally -- very powerful. To illustrate, here's that first verse:

I'll be the bad guy, I'll take the black eye, When I walk out, You can slam the door, I'll be the S.O.B, If that's what you need from me, So you don't have to love me anymore. 

This great song has it all. A son of a bitch (at least a guy willing to play that role), a breakup, a broken heart, a sacrifice, a sense of regret...the very life blood of country music. And then there's the great singer who brought all that emotion to life -- Alan Jackson. All that makes it a top 100 song in my book.

A Little Songwriter Wisdom

“A song ain’t nothin’ in the world but a story just wrote with music to it.”

Hank Williams, Sr.

“Loving is the only sure road out of darkness, 

the only serum known that cures self-centeredness.”

Rod McKuen

"I am putting to music and words things that angered me and hurt me."

Nanci Griffith

“Country Music is three chords and the truth.”

Harlan Howard

 “It’s hard to be a diamond in a rhinestone world.”

Dolly Parton

"I was rolling cars and wrecking motorcycles, drinking and doing everything I could to die early. But it didn't work."

Kris Kristofferson

"Donald heard a mermaid sing,

Susy spied an elf,

But all the magic I have known

I've had to make myself."

Shel Silverstein

I don’t know why I write really depressing songs.

I’m a kind of melancholy guy, I suppose. But I figure I’m about normal.”

Townes Van Zandt

Krist Kristofferson and Jonathan Swift

The narrator in Kristofferson's talking blues song, "To Beat the Devil," says,

It was winter time in Nashville, down on Music City row,
And I was lookin' for a place to get myself out of the cold.

He says, "It'd been a month of paydays" since he's been paid and his "hungry neeed beans." He steps inside a tavern and begins a conversation with an old man in a bar who tells him that songwriter poets' lead a "tough life." The old man then asks the narrator why he's wasting his time speaking the truth to people who don't listen.

The narrator recognizes that this is the devil he's talking to and that "the devil haunts a hungry man."

So, in the end, the songwriter narrator doesn't claim to have "beat the devil," but he "drank his beer for nothing./ Then I stole his song." In other words, instead of giving in to the devil because he's hungry, he makes poetry out of it.

Listening to this song again recently reminded me of a poem by Jonathan Swift, the Anglo-Irish writer best known for Gulliver's Travels. In "The Progress of Poetry," Swift says pretty much the same thing Kristofferson says. He compares the poet to a goose who when fat "with corn and sitting still," can't "get o'er the barn-door sill," but when forced to look for food and exercise will eventually grow "lank and spare" which will enable her to successfully try "her wings" and take flight.

Both poets indicate that poetry is born from hunger and suffering and that success and riches might work against its creation. This explains why a successful songwriter's earliest work might be much better than that which comes after he's achieved success and has grown fat "with corn and sitting still."

Here's Swift's poem (you can find it and other poetry at The Literature Network).

The Progress of Poetry
The farmer's goose, who in the stubble
Has fed without restraint or trouble,
Grown fat with corn and sitting still,
Can scarce get o'er the barn-door sill;
And hardly waddles forth to cool
Her belly in the neighbouring pool!
Nor loudly cackles at the door;
For cackling shows the goose is poor.
But, when she must be turn'd to graze,
And round the barren common strays,
Hard exercise, and harder fare,
Soon make my dame grow lank and spare;
Her body light, she tries her wings,
And scorns the ground, and upward springs;
While all the parish, as she flies,
Hear sounds harmonious from the skies.

Such is the poet fresh in pay,
The third night's profits of his play;
His morning draughts till noon can swill,
Among his brethren of the quill:
With good roast beef his belly full,
Grown lazy, foggy, fat, and dull,
Deep sunk in plenty and delight,
What poet e'er could take his flight?
Or, stuff'd with phlegm up to the throat,
What poet e'er could sing a note?
Nor Pegasus could bear the load
Along the high celestial road;
The steed, oppress'd, would break his girth,
To raise the lumber from the earth.
But view him in another scene,
When all his drink is Hippocrene,
His money spent, his patrons fail,
His credit out for cheese and ale;
His two-years coat so smooth and bare,
Through every thread it lets in air;
With hungry meals his body pined,
His guts and belly full of wind;
And, like a jockey for a race,
His flesh brought down to flying case:
Now his exalted spirit loathes
Encumbrances of food and clothes;
And up he rises like a vapour,
Supported high on wings of paper.
He singing flies, and flying sings,
While from below all Grub-Street rings.

Nashville Indie Writer Wins Top Award

Nashville, TN. October 3, 2015. There's poetry in Music City. Writer Dan Jewell’s collection of poems, A Nashville Woman and Other Sorrows, received the highest award given in the love/romance poetry category of the international 2015 Readers Favorite competition. This year’s contest was the largest ever with thousands of entries ranging from indie authors to NYT bestsellers and authors.

Jewell’s poems tell the story of a Nashville songwriter whose life spirals downward after he loses the woman he loves. The collection also includes poems and songs about rejection, writer’s block, pickup trucks, Taylor Swift, cowboys, and the struggles of the dreamers who come to Nashville seeking fame and fortune. Readers Favorite Reviewer Lorelai Rivers gives the book a five star rating and says, “These poems ring true, as though author Dan Jewell has first-hand experience of the hope and heartbreak of being a working or non-working, musician/songwriter.”

Jewell says that some of the poems and songs were written over thirty-five years ago. “I was born in Nashville, so songwriting was in the very air I breathed every day. It was only natural that I would try my hand at it. My wife and I cut a demo of some of my songs once in the old Woodland Studio, a legendary place where artists like Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, and Shania Twain once recorded.”

But, like most of the other dreamers in Nashville, Jewell says his songs went nowhere. “This collection of poems is about those women and men as much as anything, the ones who come here and struggle but keep at it, and the others who don’t make it in music but end up making a life for themselves instead. We know more than we want to know about all the ones who make it big. It’s the others I write for.”

Music fans, aspiring songwriters and performers, and anyone whose dreams didn’t quite materialize will enjoy this provocative book. More information about the book and the author can be found on the website http://www.musiccitypoetry.com/. A Nashville Woman & Other Sorrows is available as an eBook on Kindle and Nook, and in paperback (68 pages) on amazon.com.

There's Poetry in Nashville, Music City

There's poetry in Music City.

Many country music songs are poetry in the oldest and most traditional sense. But there's also poetry in the struggles of those who make the music, in the beautiful city of Nashville itself, and in the hearts and souls of those anonymous dreamers who arrive here daily seeking success in the industry.

A Nashville Woman and Other Sorrows is a book of poems, forty-five years in the making, which recently received the highest award given in the love/romance category of the 2015 International Readers Favorite contest.

These "simple and eloquent" poems tell the story of a Nashville songwriter whose life spirals downward after he loses the woman he loves. He stops for awhile in a mental place he refers to as The Catatonic Hotel before he eventually struggles back to writing and living again.

Readers Favorite Reviewer Lorelai Rivers gives the book a five star rating and says, “These poems ring true, as though author Dan Jewell has first-hand experience of the hope and heartbreak of being a working or non-working, musician/songwriter…These snippets of life, feelings, moments, scenes, and snapshots read to me like an epic song put together with the best book openings and chapter closings from every great novel never yet written.”

Another Readers Favorite Reviewer, Jack Magnus, says, “Jewell’s words are spare and eloquent, conveying worlds within a few well-placed words. While suffused with melancholy and loss, these poems also hint at redemption.”

A Nashville Woman & Other Sorrows is available in these formats: Amazon Kindle, ebook, Create Space, paperback, 68 pages, Barnes & Noble Nook eBook.

Comments are welcome in this blog's comment section.

Are Some Country Songs Poetry?

Some might say that mentioning Country Music and Poetry in the same breath is at best an oxymoron and at worst a travesty. IMHOP these readers have a narrow, esoteric, and academic notion of what poetry is.

There are many, many definitions of poetry, almost as many definitions as poems. Here's one I like from Irish poet William Butler Yeats:

Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry.

There are numerous country artists whose carefully constructed songs are poetry -- whatever it is -- in its purest sense, such songwriter poets as Bob Dylan, Gordon Lightfoot, Hank Williams, Kris Kristofferson, and Townes Van Zandt.

Take a look at a couple of videos of songs by two of these songwriters and listen carefully to the words.

First, Bob Dylan's "One Too Many Mornings," performed by Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings.

And this is Van Zandt's "Tecumseh Valley." He's singing with Nanci Griffith.

Sad stories. Internal quarrels and remembrances. Robert Frost once said, "Poetry begins with a lump in the throat."

(Reposted from Music City Poetry)

New Blog: Music City Poetry

It's been awhile since my last post. About 14 months. Time passes.

I'm getting older, that's for sure. I've noticed lately when I'm watching a movie or a TV show that when the story involves some old geezer who's passed on and they have a scene at the cemetery, the birth date on the headstone is the same as mine (1940) or even later.

John Doe: born 1940, died 2012.

Kinda makes you think.

And the political stuff is pretty much the same isn't? I mean the country still seems like that old Merle Haggard song, "rollin' downhill like a snowball headed for Hell."

But we go on.

I'm not giving up on this blog, I'm just slowing her down a bit. But I have started a new one, Music City Poetry. I hope any of you who still come by the old Post will take a look at it.

Thanks.

A Little Stones Rant

Oh, a storm is threat'ning

My very life today

If I don't get some shelter

Oh yeah, I'm gonna fade away

War, children, it's just a shot away

It's just a shot away

War, children, it's just a shot away

It's just a shot away

A storm is threatening. Most probably a s--t storm. Gimme some shelter.

Rolling stones gather no moss. That's what uncle Adam and Uncle Jamie say. They proved it.

And I'm a stone. A Stones fan anyway. I guess I ain't been rollin' enough lately.

Moss is building up on my shoes. Or is it something else sticking to my soles, some other kind of crud building up on my soul?

What I read in the news these days is making me sick, physically and existentially. I know I'm on about the Stones here but I'm sorta like the guy in the Beatles' song too, you know? The one who blew his mind out in a car.

Jumping from one allusion to another like this is probably a symptom of what that guy had.

Like I said, there's this stuff on my shoes. And it stinks.

The failure of the President to protect our diplomats in Benghazi (I know, I know, what difference does it make now), the President's corruption of the IRS (I can't believe the audacity of these people expecting any rational person to believe their lies and distortions), the President's complete (and insane) withdrawal of our troops from Iraq, the resulting emergence of the latest crop of Muslim terrorists, the more recent failure of the President to deal with the border crisis of his own making...and above it all, over it all, under it all, Main Stream media's total abandonment of its responsibility.


I think I need to scrape that shit right off my shoes.

Wading through the waste stormy winter

And there's not a friend to help you through

Trying to stop the waves behind your eyeballs

Drop your reds drop your greens and blues

Thank you for your wine, california

Thank you for your sweet and bitter fruits

Yes, Ive got the desert in my toenail

And hid the speed inside my shoe

But come on come on down sweet virginia

Come on honey child I beg of you

Come on come on down you got it in you

Got to scrape that shit right off your shoes.

Going West for awhile. See you guys next week..

A Bluegrass Post With a Little Side of EP

I've enjoyed bluegrass music for most of my life. I can remember sitting on the floor in our living room listening to the Grand Ole Opry on the radio in the late '40s before Dad bought a TV. Even then I liked the bright tinkling banjo, the dobro, the fiddle, and the guitar flat picking.

Commemorative Plaque Outside the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, TN

My interest in this music increased when Joyce bought me a Silvertone in the '60s. On the surface, it appears simple, easy to play. But it's not. I've never gone beyond the three basic chords, but I still love bluegrass to this day. And that means that I enjoy the music of Bill Monroe, sometimes referred to as the "Father of Bluegrass." I'm never quite sure what to make of all those "Father of This" and "Father of That" claims, but the genre did acquire its name from his group, the Bluegrass Boys.

I think I've mentioned before on this blog, that I've lived on a dead end road in southern Sumner County since 1973 and that Monroe had a farm at the end of our road until his death in 1996. He was a good neighbor, always waved when we passed him on the road, and once when we had a deep snow, he came along on his tractor and offered to plow off our driveway and several others who live along our stretch. On our trip to England in '87, we were eating lunch in a Pub and struck up a conversation with our waiter who was a Bluegrass Bill Monroe fanatic. When we told him Monroe was our neighbor, I don't think he believed us.

As the plaque above indicates, besides Monroe with his mandolin and vocals, the members of the original group included Chubby Wise on fiddle, Howard Watts on bass, Lester Flatt, vocals and guitar, and Earl Scruggs on the five string banjo. This is the original group with Monroe's famous waltz "Blue Moon of Kentucky."

The story of how a Rock and Roll version of the song in 4/4 time became the "B" side of Elvis' first Sun Records single is on Wiki. Wiki says Monroe liked Presley's version and gave it his blessing.

Lester and Earl left Monroe's Bluegrass Boys in 1948 to form their own bluegrass group. One important, make that very important, thing they did was to add Uncle Josh and his dobro. Here's that old raunchy classic "Salty Dog." Look for Josh's fantastic break.

Sometimes you just feel like an old "Salty Dog." Ain't that the ever lovin' Bluegrass truth?

Sexy Fins

Sometime in 1954, my friend Doug and his father invited me to go with them to the GM Motorama show which was making a stop in Nashville. It was a memorable and important experience. The show itself was spectacular with its focus on new GM models and concept cars like the new Corvette.

One of the things we did at the show was join the Fisher Body Craftsman's Guild, which sponsored a nationwide auto design contest for teenagers. We received a packet of literature with information on the contest's junior and senior divisions and specs for models that could be entered (types of cars that could be entered, suggested construction materials, scale 1 inch equals 1 foot, etc.).

Doug and I both began designing and building models to enter in the contest and we both won several state awards over the next few years. My first junior entry was a carved wooden model of a convertible sports car based on my own design. I won an honorable mention and $25. My last year in the junior division ('55-'56) I built a big Buick looking sedan that was lucky enough to win the First State Tennessee and Regional award. The prize was $150 and a trip by train to Detroit that summer.

 Besides the cash prizes, I received a small personal trophy and my high school (Isaac Litton) was given a trophy as well. The principal presented the school trophy during an assembly that fall. The trip was fantastic for a 16 year old.



All the winners stayed in the Sheraton Cadillac Hotel and we visited the new GM Tech Center, talked to real stylists, and saw the futuristic GM concept cars up close.

I was so inspired I came home in the fall of 1956 and began work on two models to enter in my first year in the senior division (the rules allowed more than one entry per person).

One of these designs was a radical front entry car carved out of a big block of balsa. I only have one pic of it from those days and it's unfortunately a double exposure. I'm posting it anyway so you can get an idea of what it looked like.

This car is in bad shape today so I can't at this point take a newer picture of it. (As an over indulgent grandfather, I had unfortunately let my grandsons play with the big models during the 80s. None of the models held up to well in that kind of play but the fragile balsa is in especially bad shape. I'm slowly restoring the models today and when they're ready I'll take some new pics and post them here on the Cumberland Post.)

The other car I built that year was carved out of a solid block of poplar wood my grandfather (a master carpenter) had found for me. This model, about 18 inches long, was also pretty radical looking and had super high fins.

If you remember, the fall of '56, all of the Exner inspired Chrysler Corp's cars were beginning to have sexy looking fins. They went all out for fins in '57 - '59 but the fins on their '56 models were still relatively restrained, as you can see from this pic of a '56 Dodge (the La Femme model).

I was slightly ahead of the fin curve with my design as you can see in this current pic of the model being restored.

I selected this model to restore first because it's in the best shape. I plan to get around to the others in time. Actually, this high finned design is a bit radical too in the sense of its impracticality. I think the fins looked pretty cool and sexy, but rear vision would have been considerably reduced. Looking at the car now, I see several other design features that were just beginning to show up: stacked quad headlights, a wrap over and wrap around windshield, a huge amount of glass in the rear window, and painted and integrated bumpers (those parts haven't been reattached to the model yet).

If I remember right, I received a $50 3rd state award for this model, but it and the other front entry one were both scored extremely low on practicality.

My work on these models and my limited success in the Fisher Body Craftsman's Guild gave me more self confidence, something I sorely needed. And I learned other things as well. I learned a bit about organizing large, long term projects and how such projects can be accomplished ahead of deadlines with steady and routine work on a daily basis. I did not pursue my high school dream of becoming an auto stylist, but what I learned from the Guild has stood me in good stead in my education career and my life over the years.

It's too bad that GM discontinued this program in the late '60s. It's also too bad that education which synthesizes work on "fun" projects with valuable concepts is not a part of our educational system today.

A Royal (Auto) Affair, Part 2

I used my family's 1954 Dodge Royal for dates, errands, and cruising throughout my sophomore, junior, and senior years of HS. At one point in my junior year, I asked Dad to let me remove the hubs and paint the wheels like it was some kind of hot racing vehicle. He agreed as long as I put the hubcaps back on when I finished using the car.

I'd seen other cars at the drag strip with visibly striking painted wheels and I followed their design -- the wheel was divided into quarters like slicing a pie into four parts. Two opposite quarters were painted red and the other two opposite quarters were painted white. When the wheel rolled slowly the moving colors would flip around and be very visible.

Sometimes, cruising around with a couple of friends on a Saturday night I'd remove the oil bath air cleaner and carefully place it in the trunk on some newspaper. I never told Dad about this until much later. When you pressed the accelerator the engine noise sounded awesome (this is not a word I would have used then or like much now, but it seems appropriate in this context) as the hemi strained to suck in as much air as possible through the small two barrel carb.

From my red light experience with other teens, I knew the Dodge with its two speed powerflite automatic wasn't really that fast, but I liked the sound of that hemi when you got down on it. I knew it wasn't all that hot and I wasn't really a racer, but, what can I say, I enjoyed the idea of it. I didn't know this at the time and it may be an inaccurate observation now, but my fascination with drag racing and speed might have been a kind of compensation for the insecurities that most young males feel at that time in their lives.

Whatever. In the spring of '58 my friend and I popped the hubs, removed the air cleaner, and went out to the drag strip at Union Hill. Against all odds, I entered the car in the stock class under an assumed name, Wild Bill Cody.

The class I entered was dominated by the early hydramatic '50s Rocket Oldsmobiles. You remember those, I'm sure. They were very fast off the line. And, as luck would have it, the opponent I drew was driving one, a 1951 two door. It looked a lot like this one.

I should also note that this is the view I had of it as we got the signal to go. He was already two car lengths ahead of me by the time I'd gone 50 feet. So I just turned off the service road to the right and left the race. My ears still burn today as I remember the words of the announcer. "Looks like old Wild Bill has headed back to the corral."

Later that year, in the summer after graduation, my family moved to Texas. I had a good job driving a truck and I began saving money for college. But I did spend a little on some new cowboy boots and hat and some hot looking Moon hubs for the Dodge. Three weeks in TX and I was already a cowboy drag racer!

I had a friend in TX whose name was Red. He had a cool looking black '53
Ford two door. I remember helping him paint some slick looking flames over the head lights on the Ford.  One night we were eating a cheese burger in some diner and he nodded toward my Dodge parked outside. "How fast you think that thing'll go top end?" he asked. "Dunno," I said. "Let's find out," he said. "I know a safe place."

We drove out on a highway outside of town that leveled out for about three miles straight. It was a clear moon lit night and the concrete highway looked like a glowing ribbon of light. Red said, "Hit that sucker."

I mashed the accelerator to the floor and with one eye on the road and the other on the speedometer, I felt the car pick up speed. I pushed it up to 97 miles per hour. There was still a lot left, but I chickened out. Red was disappointed, but thinking back on it, not pressing my luck was probably wise. The car was four years old and the tires were bias plys and had some wear on them. A blowout would have been catastrophic.

That fall, I left for college and was "carless" for two years. Then in 1960 I got married and bought a Fiat. One out of those two decisions turned out great. Joyce and I have been happily married for 54 years this August. The Fiat however, is another story. A sad one.

Sorry, I just don't feel like talking about it here since I'm going on about the old Dodge Royal. But, there's another chapter to the Dodge Royal story which involves grad school. I'll be reporting on that in part 3 of this epistle.