Yep.

I was born one mornin' when the sun didn't shine. . .

cause it was raining.

And it was a Friday, but that's a whole nother story.

Anyway, that was forty-eight years ago, sometime around five in the morning, and I don't remember it very well.

I chose a song for myself for today:

Give Myself a Party

Jeannie C. Riley's 1972 recording of a 1963 Don Gibson hit.

Mind you, I don't have the blues.

But when the alternative was Conway Twitty singing "Happy Birthday, Darlin'"--

Well, a girl's gotta have SOME standards.

And on that stuffy note, fair thee well.

Actually, Blackadder didn't hide behind the curtains. He's gone feral for the summer, so he hunkered down on the front porch, safely ensconced behind a wicker chair, two pots of petunias, and the Boston fern, which is growing at an alarming rate since being repotted.

Last night, at an unbecoming hour, we found we had no water pressure. Faucets hissed like snakes. But water? No. Zip. Nada.

Fortunately my sister married a doggedly persistent and competent DIY kind of guy. So, shortly after eight AM, BIL comes, and he, with some hindrance from my humble self--when it comes to anything mechanical, I am, frankly, a very girly kind of girl--began seeking out the problem.

No leaks in the sinks.

No leak from the commode.

No leak from any underground pipe; no soggy places in the yard.

No burnt-out electrical components.

What about the pump?

At this point, we call in my brother for a consultation. The two of them pulled the pump, and diagnosed the problem within five minutes: a minute split in the PVC pipe running from the well to the pump. A split no longer than the width of my thumbnail, but, with sixty pounds per square inch of water pressure on it, it would leak--spurt, even--with the intensity of a split artery.

Again fortunately, an easy problem to fix: six inches of the pipe, right up next to the pump, could be removed without having to replace the entire pipe. (Our well is based in a powerful underground stream, and water comes up into the shaft within thirty-five feet of the surface; the pipe, meanwhile, is way longer.) By one PM, all is quiet again.

But Blackadder was freaked out, nonetheless. Even though he's gone feral for the summer and is outside all the time, he's used to nobody here save Mom, me and him. And when, in successive waves, BIL, brother, sister and the Princess arrived, he flipped. Hence the need for a hiding place.

All is well, although the water in the commode is still a deep dingy color from a combination of rust and limescale in the pipes. Everybody extra has gone home, and Blackadder has returned to the shade of the quince bush, on his bed of moss.

But he's still jumpy. Every time a car passes, his head pops up, his eyes widen, and his ears stiffen.

And he looks to gauge the distance to the porch.

Just in case.

And until next time, fair thee well.

I don't drink: diabetes and family history are excellent dampers on impulse. There are times, though, when stress, nerves, hormones, whatever you want to call it, makes a body want to go on a bender.

So me, I pour myself a CF Diet Pepsi, crank up the Wurlitzer in my head, and go on a classic country drinkin' song binge. These are some of my favorites.

The most venerable of the lot dates all the way back to 1953. Although the most influential male artists to rise in the wake of Hank Williams's untimely death were undoubtedly Ray Price and George Jones, the man who scored the most number one hits in the fifties was Webb Pierce. This is the biggest of them all: There Stands the Glass.

Next up, Hank Thompson's bouncy western swing hit, One Sixpack to Go. It's irrepressible; you gotta love a guy who announces, "I don't have enough to pay my rent/I ain't gonna worry though/I got time for one more round and a six pack to go." I cannot verify the original release date, but I'm betting on the years between 1950-1956.

Okay, yes, you cannot have a jukebox full of drinkin' songs without at least one George Jones hit, ol' Possum being a notable consumer himself, and although there are a number of spectacularly self-pitying ones in his repertoire, I like this one: White Lightnin'. Written by J.P. Richardson, aka The Big Bopper, this is a 1962 live recording of Possum's 1959 hit.

Next up, the only slow reflective song in the bunch I've chosen for tonight: Jim Reeves's 1963 recording Bottle Take Effect. This was released on a 1963 album called GOOD 'N' COUNTRY on RCA's budget Camden label; I don't remember ever hearing it on the radio. The album, though, was in Dad's collection, so it's an early musical memory of mine.

One of my favorite writers of totally goofball songs is/was the late great Roger Miller. Although the bigger hit of this little number, Chug a Lug was recorded by Eddy Arnold, I prefer Miller's own 1964 recording, that voice of limited range and croakiness that nonetheless does make a body want to join in and "holler hi dee ho."

(Pardon me a second; I'm signalling myself for another CF Diet Pepsi.)

If you were to pin me down and make me say what my absolute favorite drinkin' song of all time is, it would be this one: Jim Ed Brown's 1967 hit, Pop a Top. Written by the late Nat Stuckey, it has, bar none, some of the best lyrics ever written by a country songwriter. Alan Jackson did a creditable cover of it in, I think, 1994, but Jim Ed's is the standard.

My favorite of the old fifties honky-tonkers was the brash, handsome, mouthy, awesomely talented Faron Young, who in 1969 recorded what is probably my second favorite drinkin' song, Wine Me Up. Faron has been all but forgotten; he had his last chart record in 1982, and died a suicide in 1996. What a waste, because he could hold his own with anybody.

Charlie Daniels has been a favorite singer of mine since the 1970s. I don't share his conservative politics; as I do with Bocephus, I overlook them and enjoy the music. I LOVE this Cajun-flavored romp from 1985, Drinkin' My Baby Goodbye. Fast, furious, raucous, fun. Period.

And last but far from least:

Dwight Yoakam is, like me, a teetotaler, but he can belt a drinkin' song with the best of 'em, as he did on This Drinkin' Will Kill Me from his second album, HILLBILLY DELUXE (1987). It's not pure country; it's bluegrass on electric instruments, and dang, it's a good way to end this little shindig.

Another round?

And until next time, fair thee well.

Couldn't resist. This cat is the spit n' image of my sister's old kitty, the autocratic, if arthritic, Sophia.