DISCLAIMER: I wrote this article before I found out about the death of my friend Mikey. Don’t think I’ve got some morbid preoccupation with death in my writing. It’s just the unfortunate timing of it all.
Charley Pride died on Saturday.
I didn’t grow up a country boy. I didn’t grow up much of anything when it came to music – or maybe I grew up a bit of everything. If you go to my mother’s house and dig around, you might find my name on a lot of different records. I remember being especially fond of Beethoven and Tchaikovsky. Still am. But I liked Rush, Steve Miller Band, and Barry Manilow too. And I guess if you wanted to find any country in my background…well, I liked Roy Clark. But that was probably because my parents had him on the 8-track.
Still, Charley Pride died on Saturday. And that brought back some thoughts on the past 38 years.
I joined the Air Force in 1981, pretty much right out of high school (although I did have that summer of ’81 as my last real time to live the life of a kid). After spending a year in beautiful Monterey, California learning Chinese, my classmates and I got to go to the west Texas town of San Angelo for another five or six months. Definitely a change of pace and scenery, and I have lot of good memories of those times.
It turns out that when you’re younger, you make the kind of friends that stick. When you spend more than a year in a classroom sitting next to someone, sharing the same intense experiences, you really get close. So when I heard that Charley Pride had died, my thoughts went immediately to my friend Linda from South Dakota – one of the sweetest and most pleasant women I’ve ever known (Linda taught me that the name of South Dakota’s capital is pronounced “Peer.” I’ll never forget that) — so I sent her a quick message (she lives in Australia now).
While Linda and I were going to school together in Texas, Charley Pride came to perform at the San Angelo Coliseum. Unlike me, Linda did have some country in her and had plans to go. But when the person with whom she was originally supposed to go backed out, she got around to asking me if I’d like to come along, and I took her up on it.
The evening was memorable for several reasons. I remember being the only person in the building wearing sneakers. And a sweatshirt. I was probably the only person in the place who wasn’t wearing (or didn’t even own) a cowboy hat.
The floor of the coliseum was set up with picnic tables and a large, sawdust-covered area in front of the stage, which I soon found out was for dancing. From what I saw, every picnic table had a bottle of Jack Daniels on it. I insisted on sitting in the stands, which meant that Linda and I were pretty obvious…as the only people in the place sitting in the stands. Front row seats though. I remember that because I had my sneaker-clad feet up on the railing when an empty beer can came flying up from the floor and hit the railing next to me. I put my feet down. I thought that it was probably my lack of proper footwear that singled me out as a target.
But nearly 38 years later, something else came to mind when I was chatting with Linda. I was a stupid 19 year-old kid in 1983. And of course as a stupid 19 year-old kid, I’m not going to sit down there with all those cowboys — and I’m certainly not going to dance. But I’ve been married over 34 years now, and you may have seen me mention not long ago that I’m not one to eat seafood, but my wife loves it, so every so often I eat seafood. What on earth does that mean? It means that sometimes you should make sacrifices for the people you love and to whom you’ve grown close. Sure, I could sit here and tell you that I was doing Linda a favor by being so gracious as to accept her invitation (I mean, I was her second choice), but the fact is, she extended to me an act of friendship and kindness and I put conditions on it because I was too proud to look like what I thought would be a complete idiot at the time.
Well Linda — and I’ve told you this already — if I had it to do over again, I would’ve danced with you. Sure, it’s empty talk now, but this post isn’t really about country music. It’s about growing up. It’s about learning from life and coming to an understanding about where things went right and where they went wrong. And maybe it can be about letting some young kid know that dancing with someone at a Charley Pride concert isn’t the end of the world. Those cowboys may even have gotten a kick out of it, remembering till the day of their deaths that time when a goofy city kid in high-tops and a sweatshirt gave it a try. I would definitely tell anyone willing to listen that nobody is going to hunt them down and haunt them for the rest of their lives for feeling out of place.
That’s a lesson I wish I’d learned long ago. Thinking about it now, I know I must’ve missed out on a whole lot of life somewhere in those 38 years. Maybe right now I can help someone else out of making those same mistakes.
I sure hope so.
When Linda and I chatted about Mr. Pride’s death, she told me her favorite song of his was “I Don’t Deserve a Mansion.” Well, here’s one for Linda, and here’s one for Charley Pride…