Amarillo by Morning

We got the Strait from the Heart album when it came out in '82. I can remember listening to it with Mother in the car (on KSCS, which is still the country music station that you get the best reception on in Greenville - did you know it won the CMA award this year for country station? Pretty cool, really. It's one of the things I miss most about Christmas in that area - the no-commercial all-night country music Christmas Eve is burned into my soul as part of what Christmas really is) and just *singing*. I loved the fiddles best, the way they sobbed together. It still gives me goosebumps, 25 years later.

My mother hates all things cowboy now, but she didn't at the time. Hell, at the time we were knee deep in her Mother Earth, heavy-duty rural stage. (She grew out of it, Daddy, not so much. Me? I'm eternally stuck all over the map, but that's not new.) And I thought that George Strait was the epitome of cowboy.

Hell, I still think he's a damn fine cowboy, along if I had to choose a cowboy singer to smile over, it'll be Chris Ledoux...

Of course, my daddy? He's my favorite cowboy, no question.

Now that I'm older, the whole idea of the song has changed - the whole dogged, I *will* do this, goddamnit, I will be free of what they want me to be thing? It resonates.

It makes me grin and nod in that old, crusty, yeah buddy sort of way.