I finished watching HBO’s John Adams miniseries this past week, having read the David McCullough best-seller on which it’s based. The miniseries was very well done, although it stuck with Adams and his story rather than portraying the events America was experiencing at the time. Paul Giamatti’s performance as Adams made the patriot very human, and the film showed that Abigail Adams (Laura Linney) was her husband’s best friend and counsel.
Characters so well known to history students wander in and out of the tale: Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Sam Adams, and John Quincy Adams among them. At first, David Morse’s Washington made me laugh, but only because it was like seeing a painting come to life.
What strikes the viewer (and reader of McCullough’s book) is the devotion these citizens have to the idea of a better government, a better country, to a higher notion of freedom than they’ve experienced under the British king, and the personal risk they will face in attaining it. Adams begins the miniseries by defending vilified British soldiers because the government for which he is willing to die would not offer less than a blind justice system. And his fellow rebels, in the end, respect the soldiers’ acquittal and Adams’ role because it is the kind of bravery and moral bearing that will sustain the government they seek to create.
Revisiting the story of how our country was born, with the ideals of Jefferson and Adams, the leadership of Washington, the passion of those who dumped tea into the Boston harbor, the dedication and sacrifice of so many lesser-known citizens who fought and defended those ideals and moral standards, makes me horrendously sad. I can only image those patriots, seeing what we have accepted from the Bush Administration criminals who have sullied the reputation and damaged the future of this great country over the past eight years, feeling that we’ve rejected their dream and their work. Let’s begin earning that hard-won freedom we’ve enjoyed, and sooner than later.
Happy Fourth of July!
My Dad told me a great story this weekend. When he and his brother were kids (late 1920s), they would visit a nearby neighbor, an old pioneer living in a shack in the woods, who was excited to have their help to set his bear trap. The trap was so huge that the man couldn’t stand on each toothed side and set the trigger in the middle. So he’d have the kids stand on one side while he stood on the other and set the trap. Apparently, nothing fatal occurred to any two-legged mammal as a result.
As a reward, the old-timer would offer them something to drink, then open a can of condensed milk and split it among a couple glasses.
He and his brothers would happily recite a slogan for the wonderful convenience of canned condensed milk:
“No tits to pull,
No shit to pitch,
Just punch two holes
in the son-of-a-bitch!”
Memo to Jeff: call Borden’s. . .
Merle Haggard used his experience as a prison inmate to create some of country music’s best story songs — Mama Tried, I’m A Lonesome Fugitive, Branded Man — which may have made his 1957 arrest for armed robbery worth the while. At his best, Haggard deftly combined a crime writer’s stark depictions of criminal life with the pathos he hoped his real-life experience would generate.
Sing Me Back Home was the title song to his 1968 LP. By that point, Haggard had had a remarkable run, with (From Now On, All My Friends are Going to be) Strangers, Sing a Sad Song, Swinging Doors, Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down, and Branded Man. He ought to have been writing tunes to be used in truck commercials*, but he still drew on his humble life and down-to-earth beliefs to craft this masterpiece of a song.
Sing Me Back Home (recorded by Merle Haggard)
written by Merle Haggard
The warden led a prisoner down the hallway to his doom
I stood up to say goodbye like all the rest
And I heard him tell the warden just before he reached my cell
‘Let my guitar-playing friend do my request.’
Let him. . .
Sing me back home with a song I used to hear
Make my old memories come alive
Take me away and turn back the years
Sing me back home before I die
I recalled last Sunday morning when a choir from off the street
Came in to sing a few old gospel songs
And I heard him tell the singers ‘There’s a song my mama sang.
Can I hear it once before you move along?’
Won’t you. . .
Sing me back home, the song my mama sang
Make my old memories come alive
Take me away and turn back the years
Sing me back home before I die
The reason that Sing Me Back Home is so popular with country fans, I think, is because of the awesome humanity of the song. It’s not a popular approach today, especially among those who most holy roll among us, to reserve judgment of another, to offer some kindness to a soul however flawed as the prisoner’s in this song. That choir today is more likely to lynch the condemned man than perform his request, and expect a first-class upgrade to heaven for their effort. The point is, there is a judgment waiting; one that matters. And the mercy shown by the choir is a reflection on them, not the crime being punished.
Besides, it’s not necessarily a done deal. As the kneeling prisoner hears whispered in his ear in Uncle Tupelo’s Lili Schull, “my grace is one sufficient to save the vilest one.”
*Sarcasm, of course