"Picking and Grinning"

As I heard the unique sound coming from the steel guitar one Sunday night at a church, memories of Sunday evenings raced through my mind.  During the summer, my family gathered at momma’s for supper and after that some pickin’ and grinnin’.

Momma and my two brothers played guitars.  No, I cannot play guitar or any other musical instrument, but I learned to grin. My sister and I inherited our musical talents of playing from dad who could not play the radio without getting static. 

In fact, in Mrs. Gentry’s fourth-grade rhythm band class I played the triangles.  The triangles looked like a dinner bell.  My part was to hit the triangles, usually twice, during songs the class played.  Notice I said hit, not play the triangles.  Momma tried to raise me right, that is playing the guitar, but she said I did not have rhythm.  You cannot get much rhythm hitting the triangles twice in a fourth grade rhythm band.

At any rate, we gathered every Sunday evening after church to play and sing.  We sang anything we could remember such as church hymns, country/western songs, rock and roll tunes, and folk songs.  There were songs like the Kingsmen Trio’s Hang Down Your Head Tom Dooley, Hank Williams’ I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry, Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder, and many more.  We actually knew more church songs than other songs.  We even made up a few songs.  My wife Lisa says I still do that when singing hymns at our churches.  I always comment, “They rhyme don’t they?”

We loved to sing together.  The choir director at my home church had my brothers and me learn several songs to sing for the congregation.  My brothers never played their guitars.  We sang either acapella (without music) or sang with what they called canned music. 

My home church considered this canned music as from the devil.  No, we did not make it devilish.  My home church considered anything other than the piano and the organ as evil.  One time a visiting youth group was going to play a trumpet.  The deacons said, “You’re not going to play that horn here.”  The son of one of the deacon’s said, “I wonder what they (the deacons) are going to do when the Trumpet of Lord sounds?”  The deacon consulted with the pastor and decided to let them play the trumpets.

I guess most of our church thought that we were paying the devils his dues by playing the guitars on Sunday evenings.  Momma, like each of us, was a sinner, a saved sinner.  Momma played anything she picked up.  She would play the harmonica, the juice harp, the saxophone, the piano, and the organ.  One time she took a comb, wrapped it with wax paper, and blew the teeth of the comb like a harmonica.

One time daddy traded a steel guitar for a banjo.  Momma played it too.  Not having a steel guitar to play Hank Williams’s heartache songs, momma would take a regular guitar, lay it flat, and use a pocketknife to slide on the strings.  It did not have the exact sound of the steel guitar, but it did the job and she sang she was so lonesome she could cry as she slid the pocketknife up and down the strings.

The only audience we had was dad and ourselves.  That is what we thought.  One Sunday evening we stopped playing after singing several songs.  Down in the holler below us, we lived on the hill, our aunts, uncles, and cousins hollered back, “Don’t stop, don’t stop.”  We had no idea our kin was listening to Mars Hill’s version of American Idol.

Momma often reminded us that we could not afford many luxuries, but we could sing about how good God is.  When momma felt depressed, she would start singing and playing church songs.  We sang with momma until death, time, and different directions separated us.  As I listened to the steel guitar, that night I felt a yearning for home as did the Hebrews did when they were carried away into captivity.

By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.  We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.  For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, sing us one of the songs of Zion.  How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? (Psalm 137:1-4 KJV)