Throughout high school, on the morning ride from #Bonlee to #ChathamCentral in #BearCreek I listened religiously to WQDR-FM. And every morning, just as religiously, they played an Allman Brothers Band (ABB) song along the way. The one I remember most is “Jessica” but there were others like “Melissa” and “Ramblin’ Man.” These songs were my teen-age sound track along with a lot of Stevie Wonder, Deep Purple, Bowie, CCR, The Doobie Brothers, Elton John, and Neil Young (strange mix, eh?). The Days of Album Rock.
I’ve gone back to The ABB a number of times since then—they represent narrow, shoulder-less, back roads (all there was in #DeepChatham really) and a South that was a Jimmy Carter Hopeful Place. In those times the national media let us know we were different, literature had long done so, we were barbarians from the look-in from outside and maybe we were in some sad ways. Looking out from inside it seemed that things were hardly going any worse down home than in the rest of the nation anyway.
Nixon, Vietnam, and the slow, painful, oft-resisted pace of desegregation and full civil rights for all permeated everything. During those WQDR-FM Tuner times (1972-76 were my high school years) the war basically wound down and ended, Nixon was exposed and shamed from office, and to my youthful eyes, naive to be sure, things did appear to be looking up. The Allman Brothers Band was part of that sense of things, especially when they helped bring The South positively to the public — and they coupled that with their staunch backing of the man with that toothy smile and country accent—Jimmy Carter, the “peanut farmer” from Plains, Georgia, the honest soul that promised to bring us from the darkness, corruption, and dishonesty of Nixon, Agnew, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Mitchell - never mind that Carter was actually a Governor and former Naval submarine officer with training in nuclear engineering. Eventually he proved that our trust in him was perhaps the truest thing that the 20th century gave to the 21st.
The most important thing to me was that The Allman Brothers thought he was great. That he was a devout Southern Baptist was a huge plus with my parents and many in their generation across the region too. We all now know that racist demagoguery subsequently turned The South back away from the positive path that I, and many others, wished upon it and returned it once again into a disappointing land of good-hearted people led maddeningly astray — the struggle carries on and had so many truly loving, thoughtful people not kept fighting that good fight we’d be far worse off than we are.
I try to remind my students that sometimes what at first looks like failure just might be, beneath it all, a monumental effort made to keep things from complete devastation and hopeless regression. Sometimes - most times even - at first glance, holding back evil can look like nothing happened — — until you look beneath the surface, see the scars, and gather the stories. And realize that a Great Holding Action has transpired.
I suspect that some of the folks at Love Valley in Iredell County on this day (July 17) in 1970 who got their first earful of The ABB, themselves ended up in a dialectical standoff, hypothesis versus antithesis, producing multiple personal and heartfelt syntheses — turtles all the way down if you will. The polarization in which we find ourselves today with a back-and-forth over the Right For All Citizens To Vote, over an honest recognition of our Past, and whether some are ‘More American’ than others has intensified and a lot of the Promise that I thought that I saw in my post-Nixon world has nigh evaporated.
No doubt the scales have been lifted. But had no one risen up, worked to check the throwback, regressive impulses, and earned myriad wounds in the process, there’d be nothing but darkness. Many good seeds have been sown. Without that work — All - everything - would today be rotten. “Even so. every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. — Therefore by their fruits you will know them.” (Matthew 7:17 & 20)
That smiling, Baptist, nuclear engineer did his part and a whole lot more to make things better everywhere. The intense enmity he draws is a measure of the inspiration he has spread. You watch who is hateful toward him. Take note. If that ‘Man from Plains’ can fight for close to a century the rest of us should do no less. Here’s the On This Day.
#OTD (July 17) in 1970 in Love Valley, Iredell County, North Carolina, the ‘South’s Woodstock’ kicked off. Set in a mock Old West Theme park, The Allman Brothers Band from Georgia headlined and local bands joined. The weekend passed peacefully w/no major incident. Some estimates put the crowd at 200,000. Film at the link.
Festival Rocked Iredell County Community, 1970
trumpfile.org
