Love and Toilet Paper

Somebody once asked Johnny Cash

what the secret to a successful marriage
was--his second had worked out well.

In his tremulous baritone,
Johnny answered, "Two
bathrooms." Once upon

an era, a lucky couple had two
bathrooms, one downstairs,
one upstairs, where bedrooms

were. One night around midnight,
the husband noticed the upstairs
bathroom had no toilet paper.

He trudged downstairs
to where a storeroom lay,
and where an awakened cat

looked at him the way a general
looks at a private. The man
apologized to the furry general,

fetched rolls of toilet paper,
and took them upstairs.
In the morning, the wife said,

"I noticed you got us some toilet
paper in the middle of the night.
That is love," she added.

hans ostrom 2023

Night Train in Fog

You hear the fractured racket of the beast,
its engine, horn, and steel on steel. The total
sound is one of the heaviest you'll know.
Fog's turned the invisible train into
a backstage cataclysm. Imagination

rises like an exhausted porter. A Black
stoker sings early versions of "Casey Jones."
Jackie Gleason offers Sherlock Holmes
a highball. John Henry stirs a kettle
of beans for hungry hobos. Dr. Zhivago

and Lara get it on joyfully in a sleeper,
and Agatha Christie shows Hitchcock
a few card tricks, but he can't concentrate
because a platinum blond just entered
the dining car. Butch and Sundance

ride disguised as old Methodist women.
Johnny Cash and Leadbelly sing
a train song, and Rain in the Face
(the engineer) leans on the horn hard.
It ain't no whistle.


hans ostrom 2016

Johnny Cash On Labor Day

No one can touch Tennessee Ernie Ford's recording of "Sixteen Tons." One does wonder, by the way, how many people nowadays even know what "a company store" is. Johnny Cash did all right in covering Ford's song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boXa8c6OuRQ&feature=related

Country and Western Song

My father's day-job was carpentry and stone-masonry, but for several years he took a second job as a bartender. My uncle owned the bar, The Buckhorn in Sierra City, California, and it had a juke box that played 78 rpm records. My father brought home some of the records that were removed to make way for new ones. So I grew up listening to "Folsom Prison Blues" and "Big River" by Johnny Cash, "North to Alaska" by Johnny Horton, and songs by Kitty Wells, Eddie Arnold, the Sons of the Pioneers, and many others.

I think FPB is still my favorite country song. I also like Hank Penny's "Bloodshot Eyes," Patsy Cline's "Crazy," Marty Robbins' "El Paso," and different renditions of "Ghost Riders in the Sky." "Honky Tonk Angel" is pretty good, too. I can't stand most contemporary C & W. It's just corporate pablum, awful stuff. That's why Johnny Cash loathed the Nashville establishment.

Country and western lyrics are extremely difficult to write, perhaps most especially for poets, because they require such simplicity, more simplicity than is in what poets think of as their simplest poems. Of course, they have to have a sense of the common folk, too. In this respect, they're like the blues.

Obviously, I'm claiming that they're difficult to write because I've written some, and they're not very good. Oh, well. I think I hear the train a-coming, so here are the lyrics (and I did manage to sneak in the word "cash"):

I Hate My Job

Verse 1:

My boss’s head is bigger than his backside.
His backside is bigger than his car.
What I need costs more than what I make.
My paycheck goes a mile less than far.

Chorus:

I hate my job.
I can’t stand it.
But I need the cash.
So I can’t quit.

I hate my job.
But I can’t quit.
Gotta feed my family.
And that’s just it.

Verse 2:

Where I work the higher-ups
Are dumber than the dirt.
They pay me only what they want,
But never what I’m worth.

Chorus.

Bridge:

Working men and working women:
They make this country go.
But the way that we get treated
Is dirty, mean, and low.

Verse 3:

I get up and go to work each day.
But I’ve forgotten why.
If I don’t get a day off soon,
I might fall down and die.

Chorus.

Copyright Hans Ostrom 2007