Hey, Mrs. Donna Jean. Whatcha doing?
“Oh, hey, sugar. Ah’m jes waitin’ for those dang ol’ boys t’ stop their fiddlin’ an’ faddlin’ so’s Ah c’n git up there an’ do mah warblin’.”
Your accent gets thicker every time we talk.
“Ah ain’ got no accent, sugar. You’s th’ one talkin’ funny. Where all y’all people from again?”
New Jersey.
“Mm-hmm. What ’bout before that?”
I am not having this conversation.
“Wuz it a swarthy locale?”
Stop it.
“Lotta swarth out there in th’ world, sugar.”
Mrs. Donna Jean, all the Enthusiasts have a question.
“Ah don’ know nothin’ ’bout birthin’ no babies.”
That was not the question.
“Jasper wasn’t really mah uncle. His relationship to mah family wuz…complicated.”
It’s like you grew up in a dream Faulkner had after too much whiskey and Chinese food. But that wasn’t the question, either.
“Well, shoot, stop beatin’ ’round yer bumbledeebush.”
Okay. You know that Keith didn’t do any interviews, and so the Enthusiasts in 2019 don’t really have a sense of who he was as a person.
“Sugar, you gonna make mah mascara run, askin’ me them thangs. Ah called him Droopy. You remember Droopy Dawg from them ol’ cartoons? That’s what he looked like t’ me. Mah Droopy loved him some Jesus. If we wuz still awake, we would go t’ Church on Sunday mornin’.”
Really?
“You betcha. Even on th’ road. We’d go t’ th’ black folks’ church, cuz they had th’ better choirs.”
No argument from me.
“An’ then we’d come home an’ beat on one ‘nother f’r a while.”
Right, that. Why?
“Bein’ Grateful Deads wuz makin’ us both crazy.”
…
Yeah, okay.
“Ain’t good f’r your soul t’ be a Rock Star, sugar. All them limos twist ya right up. Look how many folks that li’l choogly band killed! You c’n do th’ math. Your people’s good at that.”
And we’re back here.
“Jes like that song mah daddy used t’ sing t’ me ’bout that ol’ boy Finnegan.”
Not exactly a love letter. But thanks for asking her.
Whiskers on his chin-again.
That’s like a million bucks worth of audio equipment.