Thursday, August 28, 2008

Tennessee state of mind

I don't do change well. I get into grooves and I like to stick with them. For example, I drive exactly the same route to work everyday and home again. I've had the same job for years despite being qualified to do other things. I wish someone would hire me away from there. I keep thinking that if, and when, we move away things will be different. I do not plan to move many hours away from here and still work at Domino's after all!

It is nice to know I have that to fall back on.:) Yay for job skills, I guess.

I was looking at pictures last night of places I've lived at different points in my life. Of things I've lost. Of things I still have. Getting all melancholy. It's amazing how different my life has become over the years. This town has not changed much though. Murfreesboro is still pretty much the same. Yes, it is bigger and has more people and all that stuff, but it has the same feel to it. Tennessee is the same as it has ever been. It made me realize that no matter where we go, Tennessee will always be the same. It is a state of mind thing I guess.

One of my friends wrote a song that says it best for me. I am not typing in the whole thing though. Here's some excerpts:

"Smoky Mountains stretchin' forth/But they don't look the same to me
That old highway reaching forth/Goes a little too far for me....
From the Mississippi up to Cherokee/It'll always be our home...

Well it's hard out on our own/We don't know which way to go,
But she tells me it's all right/There's some things you don't need to know anyway,
But I can hear the river call to me/I hear the catfish jump in my head,
The closest that I get to Tennessee/is when I'm lying with her in bed.

So I hold her tight, like a Kudzu vine
Climbing higher up the tree,
This morning, I woke up in New Hampshire,
Fell asleep in Tennessee"
("Fell Asleep in Tennessee"--Mike LaBo)

The whole song is amazing. Actually, all of his music is incredibly touching to me. If you want to hear it, click here to go to his MySpace music page because I could not figure out how to embed music in a post. :)


2 comments:

Wendy said...

I'd love to live near mountains like that. Actually, I guess I do, but they're an hour away, so...

Have you ever heard of the band Drivin' n' Cryin'? You should listen to their song "Honeysuckle Bloom." It's all about being from the South. They're from Atlanta.

susan said...

I'll have to check out that Drivin'n'Cryin song. Two others are "Southland in the Springtime" by the Indigo Girls and "Wagon Wheel" by Old Crow Medicine Show.