Mind control

I am brainwashed.

And I don't even realize it. Although that may be a critical part of being brainwashed. But in my earliest childhood, I was programmed with a constant barrage that has apparently never left me, although I've worked mighty hard at eliminating a lot of brain cells.

But from my earliest moments until the public school system began pounding something different into me, I've discovered country music was pumped into me like a drug that could be called back up at the strike of three chords.

I guess you could call them flashbacks. It happens again and again. I'll hear a Hank Williams Sr. song and wonder how in the hell I already know it. Or Buck Owens. A slew of compadres who would be true honky tonkers, back when those where dark places with deep red stains on the sidewalk from the knife fight du jour.

In retrospect, I can sort of see how it happened. A critical part was location. I sort of really grew up with my grandparents in the Texas Panhandle in the late 50s and early 60s. Although their little town's music was dominated by the high school band, it was only about 10 miles to the rough and rugged Pampa. There still stand lines of honky tonks. Only recently, I learned it was once home to, and exerted its influence upon, Woody Guthrie.

One of the major pre-six memories is of the big wooden stereo and turntable dominated by Eddy Arnold records. And for a nod toward an alternative lifestyle, I strongly remember Roger Miller's greatest hits. Songs about skating in buffalo herds and seasoned with what I only now know could be described as jazz scat and popping noises. But I most remember two things - how soothing Arnold's voice was and the sadness in the odd song on Miller's album, a tune about friends burying one of their own after a suicide. I learned country was yippee-ki-yay and hard truth all in the same package.

The other overwhelming influence was the road. No one flew back then although the distances between Texas towns were almost overwhelming. In those straight, dark gaps of highway there was usually only one radio signal to keep you sane or awake. And it was always country music. In the blazing afternoon begging to make it between Odessa and El Paso and in the pure nothingness of 3 a.m. while I slept and others drove between Wichita Falls and Amarillo. In my subconscious, country music was making a home.

I don't know what deep corners all that settled. I can't consciously access it. It only comes about when some radio station plays an "oldie" or a musician does a remake to honor an influence. But I already know the words and can predict the coming lines. Except I hear them crack through a huge wooden cabinet.