24 August 2000 ~ Some funky dixieland...

I have a secret. Only one soul in the world knows this secret, but I'm about to tell everybody. I just cannot hold it in any longer. I'm sorry, Aaron; I know you thought you were special for being my one and only confidant, but...

Hello, everybody. My name is Helena, and I love Southern Rock.

I was listening to the radio last night at work when the grand-daddy of all Southern Rock songs ("Free Bird," of course, by Lynyrd Skynyrd) came on, and I realized I couldn't hide my secret anymore. "You like this song?" asked my boss. Shame-faced -- a little Yankee white girl in Gap jeans -- I nodded.

My favorite Southern Rock song is... damn, I don't know what it's called... The Doobie Brothers song that goes, "Roll black water, keep on rollin', Mississippi moon wontcha keep on shinin' on me..." On my last bus trip, I woke up in the middle of the night to a hot, sticky darkness and an excessively air-conditioned smelly bus. The moon outside was the brightest red I have ever seen. It was literally the color of spaghettio's. It truly freaked me out. I was cold, I was tired, the moon looked like a mis-shapen spaghettio, and I was on my way to a town I'd never seen to meet somebody who didn't know I was coming. So I sang myself to sleep: "Roll black water, keep on rollin'... Mississippi moon wontcha keep on shinin' on me... ...I'd like to hear some funky dixieland, pretty mama come and take me by the hand; by hand baby, by the hand, pretty mama; come and dance with your daddy all night long..." Yeah, it's weird, okay. And yeah, I got a few strange looks, but dude, it was a Greyhound bus... You ALWAYS see weirdos on Greyhounds. This time, I was one of them.

"What's so great about Southern Rock?" I asked Aaron once, not meaning it sarcastically in the least. He started babbling about chord progressions or something, and I nodded and pretended I knew exactly what he was talking about.

What is so great about Southern Rock?

It's loud and it's rock, and yet it's so slow and dreamy... It reminds me of big plantations and things -- like really old-school southern stuff, from old movies. Plantations and big mossy trees and swampy-things. And alligators and grits and highways and motorcycles.

I like the South. All my life, it had been pounded into me that the South was just beyond evil, that everybody was a hardcore religious fanatic, and racist, and slept with their cousins, etc., etc... But I remember the first time I was in Georgia... This big, happy black woman -- who looked vaguely like Aretha Franklin -- in a diner served me coffee and I was beyond fascinated with her. She was beyond fascinated with us, too. She brought me grits to try, too. They weren't that bad. Sort of Cream-of-Wheat-ish. But damn, I thought I was ALL-OUT Southern then!

Aaron thinks we were together in a past life in the South someplace. He says I lived in a big white house and we all sat out on the porch smoking and drinking whiskey. I guess that sounds about right. I suppose Aaron and I would make excellent Southerners. Maybe sometime we'll both have to save up some money and take a road trip together. To like, Alabama.

"Sweet home Alabama... where the skies are so blue..."

In the meantime, I shall have to content myself with singing along to the Marshall Tucker Band, and the Allman Brothers, while I do the dishes at the bar. Maybe, sometime, when nobody I know is working, I'll sneak into Record Town and get myself a copy of like, "Southern Rock's Greatest Hits."

Love,
~Helena*