The walls of her mobile home were decorated with her own pen and ink drawings. The hypnotic molten flow of a lava lamp illuminated the otherwise darkened living area while a tiny longhaired kitten played with shadows swaying on the curtains. She was, without a doubt, the prettiest girl in Georgia. It was 1970, and I was crazy about her.
In so many ways, life is different today than on those cool, autumn evenings so long ago. But, in many ways, things are very much the same.
When I would make my way over to that aging trailer park, I would often bring along my best-I-could-afford acoustic guitar to entertain Mary as she cooked up the best-she-could-afford dinner. I sometimes entertained the neighbors as well, a by-product (or, some might say, collateral damage) of Mary's modesty and sense of decorum. In those days, a nineteen-year-old young woman didn't entertain a nineteen-year-old gentleman alone behind closed doors. So, we often (not always) left the front door open.
I've got a better guitar now, and every morning I use it to entertain Mary. I sit in a chair and make up silly songs for her amusement while she cooks breakfast. I've been doing it for so long that is has become a tradition, and something that I reckon she will miss when the time comes that I am no longer able to do it.
Like I said, most of my “hits for the grits" are silly songs. But, once in a while, a song comes out of nowhere that I think is a keeper. When it does, I write it down and put it with all the others that I'd like one day to record. That's how “Love Broke Out At The Trailer Park" was born.
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Photo Credit: Long Vehicle - 11/365 flickr photo by Mr Moss shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license.