Miranda Lambert’s PR people called to see if i’d like some tickets to her upcoming Charlotte show with Toby Keith and a short interview with her. I had heard the name but mostly i had to act like i knew who she was.
Miranda had just released her second album, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, which debuted #1 on the country charts and the Academy of Country Music had just voted her Top New Female Vocalist. There were some good songs on Girlfriend, most of which Miranda had written. My favorite was Famous In A Small Town. But it was Kerosene, a song she wrote from her first album of the same name, that caused me to become a big Rand fan. I watched a YouTube of that thing a hundred times.
Rand’s comely swag reminded me of the country girls of my youth—her dimples, one in particular. When i was in my teens, during summers and weekends, my dad would send me about 30 minutes south to Pelion, SC, to work on his and my granddaddy’s farms. I was in God’s Country but the work was hard and hot as hell. Every once in awhile, however, i got to engage angels in the midst. The best looking were all cousins of mine—which was unfortunate—for me, that is. To be honest, it wouldn’t have mattered at all to me but i suspect my grandmother and aunts would’ve skinned me alive.
“Hello, Wayne? I have Miranda Lambert on the line. Fifteen minutes only.”
“Hi Miranda.”
“Hello.”
The call was a bit annoying. You know how when you’re talking with someone and they’re listening to someone or something else in the background? And they ask you to repeat everything because they weren’t paying attention? At one point, I told her I had just swallowed her Kerosene CD and would need to call 911 to have my stomach pumped. She actually caught that, but only just, and laughed. She apologized and told me it was pouring down rain and hard to hear. I could hear people talking loudly in the background. She said she was at her boyfriend’s, Blake Shelton’s, uncle’s house in Ada, OK. That piqued my interest.
It had been decades since I was in Ada, OK. I had stayed overnight in a cheap motel on my way to Denver. When I was checking out, the clerk told me i’d be missing a real treat if i didn’t have lunch at Bob’s. “People come from all over the state to eat at Bob’s,” he said. Sure enough, standing in a line that roped around the outside of the unappetizing-looking shack that was Bob’s, two guys in front of me said they had flown in from Norman, OK to eat at Bob’s. The ribs were magnificent—best i ever had.
That was a long time ago. Blake was about a year old and Miranda . . . well . . .
This year, Miranda leads the 2014 Country Music Television Awards with six nominations, two of which are collaborations with Blake Shelton of Ada, OK. Voting begins today. Vote for Miranda.
Oh yes! I remember the farm and your Granddad. Making a little money was the cool part but the work was hot as hell for sure. Drivin all over in the Beetle was fun. I remember working the watermelon fields. To this day I can not bear to eat it.
Jeff – Then we’d take a quick shower and get dressed up a little to crawl the Farmer’s Market in Cola. for girls. Not many belles at the Market—but fun times.hahaha
We had a blue Chevy truck that we used on the farms near Pelion same as that truck in Miranda’s “Automatic” video. Same hue and faded rustic finish. Trans on the column. Looks exactly same.
I can still smell the chew your GrandDad loved. Seemed there was always a remnant on his chin. How he could tolerate that stuff in that heat, I will never understand. And when we were not chasing farm girls we would unload the truck. One by One. Counting everyone, Number 1, Number 2……… Great Memories