"Okay," she said, "but not too loud."
Pretty soon we reached the part of I-24 where there's only crap country or Christian nutballs, and crazy right-wing radio talk shows...so I landed on a classic rock station, and kept the volume low.
It was tense in the car.
Mom thought every second that music was on represented a HUGE compromise, on her part. I thought maybe the car would need to be fumegated, with all this smoke in my face.
Soon enough, on comes America singing "A Horse with No Name."
A bouncy little number, and I hit the gas as we cruised on.
And on. And on. I never realized how looooong that song was, until the music began to turn unbearably monotonous, and just to stay awake I turned my attention to the lyrics.
"The first thing I met was a fly with a buzz..."
Oh jeez.
Mom kept puffing away, staring out her window.
"After three days in the desert fun
I was looking at a river bed
And the story it told of a river that flowed
Made me sad to think it was dead..."
Crap! All my years of trying to legitimize "our music' to my Mom seemed to be slipping away with each new verse. This was worse than that time when, at 16 years old, I brought my whole record player upstairs into the kitchen, and began playing her a Donovan song-- which went just fine, until Don sang the line, "With the babies in their bellies" --which caused her to stop ironing right then and there, and give me that look: "Oh! So she's pregnant."
Back to our drive: I kept driving. Mom kept smoking. America kept singing.
And after each new verse, came something even WORSE...
"You see I've been through the desert, on a horse with no name
It felt good to be out of the rain
In the desert
you can remember your name--
'Cause there ain't no one,
for to give you no pain~
La, la-laaaah la, la-la-la-la la, la la laaaaah, lah lah..."
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see her smirking in victory. Though she was not speaking, I knew Mom's many facial expressions, well enough to read her mind, about this song: 'Gawd, help us all.'
"Damn," I thought. "I don't remember the song being this bad."
"After nine days, I let the horse run free..."
The hypnotic beat almost made me dizzy. Maybe I'm tired, I kept thinking.
When is Paducah gonna be here? Shit, this song is nine days long!" Suddenly I thought I heard Mom mumble something, under her breath.
"What?" I said, turning it down a bit. Her open window made it hard to hear, at 70 miles an hour.
"I said, 'WHAT A STUPID SONG!'" she answered.
Checkmate.
How could I argue with that? The truth is, I had no answer.
I thought maybe the cruisin' beat might disguise my inability to come up with another retort, so I turned the radio up a little. Bad decision:
"There were plants and birds and rocks and things
there was sand and hills and rings..."
Now, I could not stop the little smile that began to crease my face, so I looked out the driver's side window, in order to stifle it.
"The ocean is a desert with it's life underground
And a perfect disguise above
Under the cities lies a heart made of ground
But the humans will give no love..."
Finally I gave in and burst out laughing.
"Alright, alright! I'll give it to ya: THIS SONG SUCKS, Mom! In fact, I never realized how much it sucks until this very moment...but you're right...this is the stupidest song I've ever heard. Happy now?"
Mom turned toward me with a subtle grin, exhaling the last bit of her 'ciggybutt' in my general direction, and mashing its remains into the car ashtray, as if crushing the last-ever defense of my whole generation, on the backs of these three longhaired ex-pats.
"Who is this?" she asked, as the song kept on going. "Just so I'll know."
Now we were both giggling openly.
"Umm...it's...'America'."
"You see I've been through the desert,
on a horse with no name..."
"America?"
"Yes. The group is called...'America'."
"Oh."
I didn't have to look, to see her eye-roll.
Suddenly we were both laughing.
"Really, Peter! Can't you do better than this?"
"Mom, we're in Nowhere, Kentucky--this is the only radio station I can get."
She fell silent again.
"...it felt good to be out of the rain
In the desert you can remember your name
'Cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain..."
Here and there, I could still hear a titter rise within one of us.
She was right: What a stupid song!
Luckily, we made it to Paducah that day. It was one of the last times Mom ever got to see her sister Ginny. There was a peace about it all, and a sort of generational wisdom between them I couldn't quite grasp at the time, but I get it now. Every new generation thinks it reinvented the wheel. (Or music.) But the truth is, for all our silly "disrupt" nonsense...we haven't done anything but rearrange the same 8 notes and 26 letters of the alphabet, even though we think we're pretty hot stuff.
The stark reality is closer to what Steve Forbert once sang: "The Manhattan skyline is probably best seen through New Jersey eyes."
At first, I thought she'd "ruined" the song forever...but today I know different. Mom's been gone almost twenty years now, and that long song on that long ride still makes me smile, whenever I hear it. I remember gamely trying one last 'defense' that afternoon in the car, as the trees whizzed by us, and Paducah got a little closer. It went something like this:
"Mom, it's not about the lyric. See, the music is designed to keep you company on a drive just like this, don'tcha get it? It's helping me stay awake. Who cares what it says?"
She lit up another ciggybutt, and inhaled knowingly.
Unbelievably, America was still singing. Over time, I have grown to respect their true talent, which is apparently time-shifting. (Nobody has ever made four minutes and sixteen seconds seem longer.) That stupid song's still playing in my mind, all these years later...
"La, la-laaaah la, la-la-la-la la, la la laaaaah, lah lah...
La, la-laaaah la, la-la-la-la la, la la laaaaah, lah lah..."
____________________________
______________________
This Opinion Column and All Images Herein are
© 2018 By Peter Rodman*. All Rights Reserved. * Except the photograph of 'America,' which is Copyright by Wikipedia.
The MUsic and Lyrics to "A Horse with No Name" are Copyright 1971 by Dewey Bunnell.
