Sunday Morning, Saturday Night: Songs of a Divided South

Our son took my wife and me on a camping trip in Oregon. We enjoyed the unearthly beauty of Crater Lake, a night in an old-growth forest, and a concert in the shadow of Mount Hood. But between these spectacles were hours in the bumpy back seat of his Subaru Outback with a skinny hound while he, in the front with his wife and the other dog, hunted music on the radio. In over-lumbered wastelands and raw country towns, that replicant of the Deep South that is back-country Oregon, Aaron complained: "Nothing but country and religious stations!"

I grew up in Alabama, a culture divided between saints and sinners. Alcohol was a Red Sea between them. "He drinks" was enough to explain wasteful and self-destructive behavior, even though the Bible takes moderate drinking for granted. Jesus made wine (John 2:1-11), consumed enough of it to be called a "drunkard" (Luke 7:34, Matthew 11:19), and even called it his blood. Paul advises Timothy to drink wine (1 Timothy 5:23). The only total abstainers were Nazirites like Samson, extremists who also avoided corpses and refused to cut their hair.

The one anti-drinking verse from in my Baptist childhood is Proverbs 20:1, "Wine is a mocker," which was used to suggest that everyone was, in effect, an alcoholic. One drink was ruinous--which, absent a culture of moderation, may have been a self-fulfilling prophecy. Maybe this was the Scotch-Irish culture, amplified after the Industrial Revolution. Exhausted factory workers were paid just time for a Saturday blowout. Godly men took the cash home to support their families--if meagerly. The ungodly drank, danced, and gambled. Two paths branched at the paymaster's window, paths either to the Lord or to the Devil. Cheerful, moderate drinking was inconceivable.

The gulf between Saturday night and Sunday morning has closed here in cosmopolitan Northern Virginia where I live. Adult parties serve alcohol, and theatre events have cash bars. But the divide still dominates the music scene. Nobody sings country to a pipe organ. Inspired by my son's radio tuning in Oregon, I wrote a song in the voice of a young man torn between the two sides.

SUNDAY MORNING AND SATURDAY NIGHT

I'm torn between whiskey and communion juice,

Shooters and Mom's apple pie.

I been known to inhale but that church basement food,

That old chocolate meringue, makes me high.

Between Sunday morning and Saturday night,

choirs singing and old steel guitars,

Honky-tonk angels and angels in white,

Golden streets and the Heaven of honky-tonk arms.

I'm torn between family and hard-drinking friends,

Rook cards and those aces and queens,

Things that I do that they tell me are sins,

And things that go with collard greens.

Between Sunday morning and Saturday night,

choirs singing and old steel guitars,

Honky-tonk angels and angels in white,

Golden streets and the Heaven of honky-tonk arms.

I'm torn between checkers with my nephew John

And the seven-come-eleven of dice,

Cool front-door kisses while mamas look on,

And hot kisses bought for a price.

Between Sunday morning and Saturday night,

choirs singing and old steel guitars,

Honky-tonk angels and angels in white,

Golden streets and the Heaven of honky-tonk arms.

CULTURAL NOTES

To Southern Protestants, this may all be obvious, but there are so many cultural reference points in the song that maybe I ought to note them.

A communion tray

First Verse. Whisky, like pasteurized Baptist grape juice, is served in shot glasses. I first saw these tiny glasses on socketed trays in church. Shooters are, of course, associated with social binge drinking, opposites to Mom's apple pie. The third line recalls Bill Clinton's  then-shocking admission that he'd tried marijuana but "never inhaled." On Sunday morning, the man gets high on the smell of potluck meals, the kind held in church basements. These meals often include pies of chocolate pudding (Jello brand or equivalent) with a baked meringue topping.

          Chorus. Steel guitars go with honky-tonks, choirs with churches. Honky-tonk angels alludes to Hank Thompson's "The Wild Side of Life," a great song about the cultural divide. In it, a man sings to his beloved who has become a "honky-tonk angel":

The glamor of the gay night life has lured you

To a place where the wine and liquor flow,

Where you wait to be anybody's baby

And forget the truest love you'll ever know.

The speaker can take the path to Heaven (golden streets, angels in white), or he can experience flushes of another kind of heaven hooking up with women in bars.

Second verse. Traditional playing cards, identified with gambling, were banned from Godly homes. Rook cards, introduced in 1908, were the gaming equivalent of Welch's grape juice, chaste decks of nothing but numbers, colors, and "Old Rook." You might play poker with a deck, but Rook declared that you didn't. When we visited Methodist relatives in North Alabama, Uncle Homer's family played nightly games of Rook. It was the only card game my Baptist mother played well--and to win. Collards were a local staple, home grown and home cooked.

Third verse. Checkers is also a morally pure game, in contrast to craps. The only approved kissing on a date with a good Christian girl was a goodnight peck at the door, her folks probably watching. "Hot kisses bought with a price" may refer to prostitution or something less formal. Hank Thompson's angel who "waits to be anybody's baby" may work a day job, but she'll expect her beaus to spend generously. Recall Webb Pierce's "In the Jailhouse Now": "We started to spend my money, / And she started to callin' me honey."

THE DEVIL'S IN THE DUALITY

Old-fashioned Southern puritans, particularly Baptists and Methodists, were strict dualists--almost Zoroastrian or Manichaean. Satan is prince of the world. There is no middle way, no such thing as dancing, drinking, gambling, smooching, or playing "the Devil's music" in moderation. In practice, it's a complex mix, with saints and sinners in one family--even in one divided soul. Johnny Paycheck sang across the divide: "I turned out to be the only hell my mama ever raised."

ANOTHER HONKY-TONK ANGEL

Here's one more song of mine. A lonely middle-aged highway worker meets a seasoned angel around closing time.

I GOT ISSUES, BUT I'M ALRIGHT

She wanted to dance, so I gave her a chance.

Her perfume smelled like smoke.

She had hair on her lip and a desperate grip

As we staggered about the floor.

She was at least thirty-eight but it was getting late,

Midnight, nobody else in line.

She told me her life, how she had been a wife

And a waitress and worn size nine.

And she said, "I got issues, but I'm alright.

Don't be afraid to take me home tonight."

I was feeling real hot from the last double shot

Of Jack as she hooked my belt.

I'm a highway man, find work where I can,

Half forgotten how a woman felt.

She had a real big chest and a short red dress,

And the rest of her was nice and loose.

She said, "I caught my husband with his so-called cousin.

You might have seen it on the news."

But she said, "I am good now, ain't been in court

Since I started taking that St. John's Wort."

Like the ball on the ceiling my brain was reeling.

I was sinking deep in sin

When she laid her head on my shoulder and said,

"I guess I'll have to call in sick again."

She said, "I had two brats, the cutest little rug rats.

They're in foster care today.

The damn neighbors lied. I had my tubes tied.

I ain't a-going back that way."

She said, "I am safe now, and I will be kind.

I just need a man to take me back in time."

She said, "Follow me home, but keep going on

And park a little down the street.

I got a restraining order on the rug rats' father,

But I think he may be stalking me."

I expected a shot out in the parking lot,

And I had to be to work at seven,

But I still went home with that big ol' lonely

Angel from honky tonk heaven.

She said, "I got issues, but I'm alright.

Don't be afraid to take me home tonight."