My Honky Tonk Roots

On a ski trip in North Carolina, our group of travel writers were getting acquainted, discussing what we write about and projects in progress. When I mentioned that I’m developing a book on honky tonks, a guy who writes hiking books said, “No, you’re too sophisticated for something like that. Dives and country music – that’s not you.”
I didn’t argue with him because I can understand his position. In my previous career, spent 20-plus years in corporate IT at conservative insurance companies. I’d pretty well washed all the telltale signs of my country background away to fit in – learned to talk proper English, dress like a Yuppie, play the games to climb the ladder. But just because I don’t look or talk or act like I was raised on a farm, that doesn’t mean I don’t have country roots.
And the attraction to honky tonks – that’s probably mainly due to my dad. He was raised on a farm by a strict church deacon, but once he was old enough to head for the bright lights and barrooms and honky tonk angels of the big city, he was gone.
Sure, he tried to put on a good front. He sold insurance door-to-door, raised a family and mostly put forth a respectable front. But there was a part of his heart that always longed for the nightlife. He learned to play a little backup guitar when we lived in Florida so he could sit in with the band on Friday nights. In Tennessee, he took a weekend job tending bar at a place called the High Chaparral – a rowdy place between two small cities where he hung out regardless of whether he was working. Most of his life was a sad country song – stuck between the life the world wanted him to lead and the yearnings he had just to kick up his heels and have fun.
He’s gone now – 30 years of cigarettes cut his days short – but sometimes I feel his presence when I’m walking along Broadway in Nashville or checking out the Christmas lights over the bar in some new honky tonk I’ve discovered off the beaten path.
I may still pass for a corporate suit, but I’m still a country boy at heart – and I inherited his honky tonk genes.