I got the blues bad today. The time-sanctioned honky tonk solution, of course, is to go on a bender. Unfortunately I'm a Type 1 diabetic. Then there's my hillbilly gothic ancestry. Everybody on both sides of the family is either TT, a lush or a binge drinker. (True story: I had a cousin who passed out sitting on a barstool. He woke up hours later to the smell of gunpowder and blood on the bar. He got up and went home, and I don't think it ever truly registered with him that while he was away, so to speak, two men killed one another within a couple of feet of him. He eventually died so well-preserved they skipped the embalming process.)

Since I can't get a decent buzz from my tipple of choice--CF diet Pepsi today, with a tap water chaser--I guess I'll have to do it with music. Kindly (please?) refer to my previous blogs on drinking songs, and allow me to add ten more to the list.

In reverse order they are:

"Chug a Lug" recorded by Roger Miller. I think Eddy Arnold may also have recorded this cheerfully choppy little ditty about drinking moonshine, but Roger Miller did his own songs better than anyone. He was one of a whole generation of songwriters, including Mel Tillis and Willie Nelson, who used to drink together at Tootsie's Orchid Lounge in Nashville. I've often wondered if he got the inspiration for this song while they were all getting companionably paralytic.

"Sweet Honky Tonk Wine" recorded by Wayne Kemp. Kemp, a songwriter who never quite made it as a singer, struck gold with this one from around l970, about a guy whose woman leaves him, taking everything except "some of that sweet honky tonk wine." Which, of course, he drinks.

"Party Time" recorded by T.G. Shepherd. This one from around 1980 successfully spans both the lost love and drinking song categories. Loud honkin' guitar, thumping whorehouse piano. Great stuff.

"I Gotta Get Drunk" recorded by Willie Nelson. I love this one for nothing better than this sage observation: advised by his doctor to give up the booze, he opines, "there's more old drunks than there are old doctors, so I guess I better have another round."

"Set 'Em Up, Joe" recorded by Vern Gosdin, whom peers and fans alike call The Voice. Part drinking song, part lost love song, part tribute to Ernest Tubb (he instructs the bartender, "set 'em up Joe and play 'Walkin' the Floor'"), this one's a compulsive singalong--but only Vern Gosdin can hit the low note at the end.

Tune in next time when the world's orneriest Wurlitzer cranks out the top five, second tier. Till then, fair thee well.

I cannot claim credit for that title: it's a 1960s tearjerker written by Curly Putman, who gave us another six-hanky weeper in "He Stopped Lovin' Her Today" and an unanswerable conundrum in "The Green Green Grass of Home": why the hell is the guy being hanged?

"My Elusive Dreams," recorded first by David Houston, is about a fiddlefooted man and his long-suffering but loyal wife. Also recorded as a duet by George Jones and Tammy Wynette during their tumultuous marriage, and by Charlie Rich as a filler on a 1970s album, the song per se has no relevance to me; only its title does.

To explain that we've got to go back some twenty odd years, to the days when I was a pompous, humorless, self-important college sophomore of the worst sort. Oh, I had dreams then! I wanted to be a published poet by the age of thirty; I wanted to travel; I wanted a sexy, handsome, intellectual husband; and I wanted to write about country music.

Country music, despite the best efforts of historians, critics and performers, has always been considered the least sophisticated of mediums, literally the country bumpkin of the entertainment world. At the time I was majoring in communications, and my advisor was a wonderful man named Bill Gribben, who had worked in the media for many years. He was wise, witty, kind, self-deprecating and observant, and I miss him to this day. (He died near the end of my senior year.) I could tell Mr. Gribben literally anything, and when I confided that I wanted to write about country music, he had one dumbfounded reaction: "WHY?"

Didn't know; just knew I did.

In any case, my dreams proved elusive. My father had two strokes my senior year; they were for him the beginning of a nine-year spiral of declining health and increasing mental illness. I never left home; I worked to help Mom pay his medical expenses. My siblings both married; I stopped looking for Mr. Right when I realized I was only attracted to abusive men like my father. And the poetry went from a stream to a trickle to a dry creek bed.

Fast forward to the present: one of my elusive dreams has come true, probably in retrospect the one that was meant to be. I'm writing about country music. I'm doing it on a borrowed computer (thanks Willard), but I have people reading what I write, and for that I'm profoundly grateful. Guess I'm living proof that not all dreams are fleeting things.

Till next time, fair thee well.

Hey guys, hope you missed me this week. (Don't everybody groan at once.) As part of an ongoing home repair project, we're digging in the equivalent of a trash pit. As my contribution to the cause, I'm disposing of a quarter-century's worth of journals. Totally aside from being major dustcatchers and prime breeding ground for silverfish, spiders and other vermin, the oldest ones have been chewed to hell by things with teeth.

I have been begged by a very few people (okay, Tooey's the only one!) not to destroy that much writing, but I want rid of all the nastiness those notebooks hold. So I borrowed Willard's shredder, and to its gnashing whine I began to think of country songs befitting the theme.

Hanging on to all that crap had gotten to be an obsession, like the poor sap in "He Stopped Lovin' Her Today": "Kept some letters by his bed/Dated l962. . ."

With a shudder I turned to Randy Travis's jocular "Diggin' Up Bones." Indeed I could be "exhumin' things that's better left alone" but I figure the less evidence I'm truly a pompous ass at heart, the better.

There were two others that came to mind, both recorded by a myriad of artists: "Old Love Letters" and "Burning Bridges." Unfortunately, save for some highly insincere ones I wrote to God during a desperate phase, there are no love letters in the collection. As for "Burning Bridges," it only reminded me of a quip attributed to the late NYC mayor Fiorello LaGuardia: "I never worry about burning my bridges, because I never retreat!"

Finally, I decided that the nearest song thematically was Ray Price's stunning "Burning Memories" with certain modifications.

I also made a list of reasons to shred. In reverse order, they are:

There are no obsessive would-be biographers banging down my door, begging for the chance to write FAIRWEATHER LEWIS: BLOG YOUR HEART OUT, COUNTRY GIRL. Not even the ever-loyal Willard will touch that one. On a more practical note, I'm also eliminating any potential for blackmail.

I don't need written depositions about my father's abuse: I won't be his prosecutor in the afterlife.

I don't need written reminders of the sweet funny things my precious nephew and nieces have done from babyhood: those are locked up in my heart.

We're in the midst of a drought; the chances of me getting a permit for a bonfire of the inanities are between slim and none.

And lastly, try as you might, you can't burn memories over a gas heater.

But I can duet with Ray Price while I shred.

While I'm at it, happy 80th Bday to Charlie Louvin, the surviving member of the great Louvin Brothers. And until next time, fair thee well.

I love not only country music history, but all history. The brouhaha between Ann Coulter and Elizabeth Edwards brings to mind a character who is, perversely, my favorite from British political history: the vicious eighteenth century polemicist known as Junius.

From 1765 to 1771, Junius savaged King George III and a series of cabinet ministers, many of whom were forced to resign their posts by public outcry in the wake of his assaults. One hapless minister of finance was exposed as an inveterate gambler, unfit to handle the country's treasury. Another minister was accused of being a sodden alcoholic who handed out jobs and patronage to his drinking companions. A third was attacked as a shameless womanizer, then as a heartless seducer and betrayer when he married a woman other than his mistress. The king was characterized as stupid, incompetent, tyrannical, and equally as corrupt as his ministers.

Ann Coulter uses newspaper columns, books, blogs and TV to spew her venom; Junius spewed his through letters to the editors of newspapers, the lone mass medium of his day. Unlike Ms. Coulter, Junius was almost paranoid about concealing his identity; to a polite query from radical politician John Wilkes, Junius replied that if his identity was revealed, he would not survive a week, such was the fury and embarassment of his victims.

Although Junius continued to publish sporadic letters as late as l773, they show a marked decline in quality after 1771. As a bitter government critic, he remained a highly popular figure into the nineteenth century. In Lord Byron's satirical poem "A Vision of Judgment" Junius--whom Byron describes as a "mighty shadow of a shade"--rails against George III's admission into heaven.

In the twentieth century it was established that Junius was in fact two men: Philip Francis, a clerk in the Naval Office, and Tobias Fitzpatrick, a consumptive wit and man about town. Francis relayed workplace gossip to Fitzpatrick, who turned gossip into the scurrilous innuendo of the letters. Fitzpatrick died in 1771, and Francis lost his job at the Naval Office shortly thereafter. Although Francis was an unpleasant man at best, he was no fountain of spite like the late Fitzpatrick. Lacking both his vitriolic partner and the gossip that was Junius's lifeblood, he retired into obscurity.

Junius was a staunch supporter of the American cause long before our revolution began, and a stout defender of both the far-left radical John Wilkes and the brilliant Irish liberal Edmund Burke. He was never so crass as to pretend that his attacks on politicians added ideas to political discourse. He never took cheap shots at the bereaved, as Ms. Coulter has done at the politically active 9/11 widows and the Edwards family; nor did he ever express a pious hope of any politician dying as a result of terrorist assassination. (Yes, I realize Ms. Coulter was only parroting the sleazy Bill Maher; the comments were inappropriate, no matter what the source.) Although Junius was referring to the cabinet minister who fired Philip Francis, his bemused words could equally apply to Ann Coulter: "The proceedings of this wretch are unaccountable."

The genius of Junius, nightcrawler though he was, is that Francis, his surviving half, knew when to quit. Junius showed up, skewered his targets, and vanished back into the shadows after a short spectacular career. Too bad Ms. Coulter is too egotistical and proud of her nasty image to follow the example of her elder and better.

This morning brings news that a body found in an Ohio lake is that of Jessie Marie Davis, nine months pregnant, missing for over a week. A former boyfriend, the alleged father of her unborn child, has been arrested.

Perhaps because of greater opportunities for media attention, the murder of a pregnant woman nowadays seems horrifyingly commonplace. Over several years' time, the perpetrators have included football stars, slick yuppies, and one trying to prevent the exposure of an elaborate double life. All their victims were inconveniently pregnant, and their unborn infants died with them.

Interesting, therefore, that almost exactly two centuries ago, the murder of a pregnant woman was so phenomenal as to inspire what is arguably folk music's most famous "murder ballad."

The year: 1808. The place: Guilford County, North Carolina. The victim: an orphan called Naomi Wise, the ward of Squire Adams. The killer: Jonathan (Jon) Lewis. According to noted song collector Alan Lomax, although Jon Lewis willingly dallied with Omie, as the ballad calls her, he had ambitions to marry a woman of wealth and social standing, and when Omie told him she was pregnant, he lured her to a nearby river, where he drowned her.

Those are the bare facts. Like many a folk ballad, "Omie Wise" has a number of variants, both of lyrics and melodies. My favorite is an eerie minor-key version performed by legendary Deep Gap, North Carolina singer Doc Watson, who learned his variant from his grandmother. Doc's version fills out the dreadful story with details of how Lewis sadistically told Omie his intent; how Omie begged for her life and her baby's; how her body was found, some time after her disappearance, by two young boys fishing off the riverbank. Doc's variant ends with a ballad convention: Jon Lewis was arrested, and "no friends nor relations would go on his bail."

The great collector of North Carolina folklore, Frank C. Brown, reports that, with the connivance of friends, Jon Lewis excaped from jail and vanished. Meanwhile the memory of his crime was kept alive by the ballad, composed by some unknown mountain poet, "which was sung at every hearth." Brown--and Lomax, following him--say that some years later a party of Guilford County men located Lewis and brought him back to face trial; unfortunately, by then most of the witnesses against him were dead, and the case collapsed. Only on his deathbed, it is said, did he confess to the murders of Omie and their unborn child.

Some men take unspeakable shortcuts to rid themselves of an inconvenience. God willing, justice will not fail Jessie Marie Davis as it failed Omie Wise and her child, who lie buried not far from where they died.

Till next time, fair thee well.