There’s this guy I work with. I never much liked him. Sort of a buttoned down fellow…an analyticals’ analytical. Everything in it’s place. A business man always taking care of business.
And me, well I’m kind of a child of the 70’s. Sort of free flowing, creative, less interested in logic than in intuition. Operating on a different side of my brain…whatever is left of it anyway.
And this fellow was my boss for a long time and I frustrated him and he frustrated me. He, being a man of numbers, rules and order. Me flying by the seat of my pants, dreaming about impossible stuff.
Now, over time we’ve learned to co-exist and maybe even appreciate each other for those characteristics that each of us lacked, but recently there has been a big change in my viewpoint of this gent.
You see, there’s this gift exchange we do at Christmas time at my place of employment. It’s one of those affairs where you draw names and then you have to get something for whoever’s name you draw whether you like them or not, and you never know who got your name until the Christmas party, where, with a lot of hoopla those names are revealed, and then you find out what people really think of you, by however they decide to spend their twenty dollars on your gift.
Well…When my name was called, this fella brought me my gift, All wrapped up in a perfect bow, in a perfect sack. A little small thing, and with feigned enthusiasm, I opened it up.
And what to my wondering eyes did appear?
Hazel Dickens. The perfect present. The perfect C.D. Songs for poor folks, music for the downtrodden, pulled from heart of the broken. Raw and rough, and wretched and perfect in every way. The best music by the best dang songwriter in the physical universe. It seems that every song I hear that affects me at a visceral level spilled out of that woman. Songs like “Making a living by the sweat of my brow.”, “A few old memories”, West Virginia, my home“, “ You’ll get no more of me”, Old and in the way” and that wonderful paean to endless poverty, “Busted”. Songs of hard scrabble life. Songs of desparate and hopeless people, who kept on going because they didn’t know what else to do.
I understand that woman. I’ve lived on bacon ends and top ramein. Burnt broken pallets in a potbellied stove because the heat had been turned off.. Slept with a woman just to get warm. Built trailer steps for a family of migrant workers who felt sorry for a poor boy who had no home.
Life raw and unadorned.
Hazel Dickens! This fella bought me a Hazel Dickens C.D.
It made me cry.
I’ll always look at him different now.
