NickydocDocs

     So yeah.  I was driving to the hospital this morning to pick up some equipment to perform a little pro bono doctoring on a friend of mine, and I heard Conway Twitty on the radio.  Some songs transport me back to a particular place and time with an eery emotional accuracy that never fails to catch me off guard--it's like time folds back on itself like a blanket.  For example, I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing the first time I ever heard Peter Gabriel's 'In Your Eyes' on the radio.  I was driving home from Centre College and had passed Chenault Bridge.  It was before the bypass was built, and you still had to drive through the country to get to Danville.  Chenault Bridge was this beautiful old country bridge, painted sky-blue, that spanned a creek down in this little valley.  It was a beautiful spring day, and the song came on.  I remember crossing the bridge, and pulling over to the side of the road to just listen.  Aural medication for a tired young mind.  When I was driving to the hospital this morning, I happened to be listening to some radio station that played Conway Twitty.

     My dad absolutely LOVED Conway Twitty.  He used to sing 'Hello Darlin' to my mama every time he'd see her after they'd been apart.  He'd listen to Conway Twitty when he was upset about something; when he was really happy; or when he was whiling away the hours at a poker table.  He had this great voice with a richness in timbre that I'll never forget--sort of like Johnny Cash.  And as I was driving down the road, I remembered one night he came in pretty late.  My dad was, in addition to being a great dad, a bookie.  He had a 'bookie joint' in Ashland, Kentucky, for most of my youth.  People came and went,  Consequently, I met all manner of folk in my youth, and learned to respect them all just the same.  There was 'Beardog', the sneak-thief, 'Bones', the inveterate card cheat, 'Junior', the somewhat polished (and crooked) local politician, and 'Mt. Sterling Red', who, it was rumored, had shot a man in the face for bedding his wife.  These colorful characters were country tough, to be sure--yet all of them treated me with respect, and I learned valuable lessons from each of them over the years.  One night, my father came in, and was visibly shaken.  He instructed me to go into my room and take the pillow cases off of my pillows.

     Having been raised in a rather unusual environment by rather non-traditional parents, I didn't think twice about it.  I went directly into my room and stripped the cases off of my pillows.  When I got back into the living room, my dad told me to go out to the back of his car and put all the quarters on the floor boards in the pillow cases.  Which I did.  I knew better than to ask where they came from.  At any given time, I could be called to help load a brand new television (still in the box) onto a truck somewhere; I could be called into my parent's bedroom where there would be a brand new pair of Dan Post alligator boots waiting for me; and I could be called upon to take them off at any given time so he could sell them.  My dad paid for my first trip to europe with a solid 6 pound brick of melted-down silver.  To this day, I have no idea where that gargantuan ingot of silver came from.  So when he told me to put what appeared to be hundreds of quarters into my pillowcase, I didn't ask any questions.  He went back into his bedroom with my mama and closed the door.  I heard Conway Twitty playing in their bedroom, and knew enough to lay low.  I set the pillow case full of quarters on the kitchen table, and went back to bed.

     So when I heard Conway Twitty today, I thought of my dad--how music soothed him.  In a way, it's really no different than me listening to certain songs on my iPod when I'm feeling this way or that.  In fact, it's really no different than anyone who finds sanctuary in any of the arts.  Whether it's listening to Prokofiev's 3rd Piano Concerto, or Beethoven's 9th; whether it's listening to U2's 'Joshua Tree' CD or Madonna's 'Ray of Light'; music affects us all in specific and often therapeutic ways.  For me?  Usually something heavy in percussion.  If anything at ALL is wrong with me, it's usually nothing that Youssou N'Door can't take care of.  As for my dad?  It was Conway Twitty.

     The next day, I would learn where those quarters came from.  My dad took a crowbar and pried a pay phone off and out of it's booth.  As it turns out, the reason that lead him to do such a thing and ultimately lead me to stuffing those quarters into a pillowcase was quite simple.  My sister, Melanie, has psoriasis.  As a young child, she used to have to wear long-sleeve shirts in the summer and keep her hair cropped pretty short.  Back then, the only thing that really kept them at bay was a rather expensive steroid cream.  My parents didn't have the money to afford her medicine so my dad took a crowbar and busted into a pay phone.  One might think that being raised in such a household can only portend all manner of tragedy for a young and formative mind.  I suppose I would beg to differ.  I learned a lot from my father.  I learned what it means to really be willing to go to the mat for the people and things that I love.  I learned how to really have the courage of my convictions.  I learned to fight ceaselessly for the things that are meaningful to me.  I've learned not to judge.

     Being on the free lunch program at school was tough.  All the other kids knew.  Back then, Ashland Oil, Inc. was still headquartered in Ashland, Kentucky.  I went to school with the sons and daughters of their executives.  It was tough paying with groceries with food stamps.  I remember we used to go to the local IGA just before it closed to avoid the almost unbearable humiliation of pulling out those 'stamps'.  But we survived.  Like millions of people still do.  And while we've all moved on and, by any estimation, worked our way out of that crushing poverty as a family, listening to Conway Twitty brought it all back.  As I've become more and more interested in the arts over the years, I've never been part of the social aristocracy that patronizes the arts for advancement.  I donate my time and resources to the arts because they add magic to my life, just like Conway Twitty added magic to my father's life.  The humiliation of a child has turned into the humility of a man.  And when I'm at one of the endless fundraisers I attend almost weekly--full of rarefied air and people who have never done an honest day's work in their lives, I'll remember Beardog, or Bones, or Junior.

    I'll think of their easy ways and their genuine grins.  I'll remember their 'honor among thieves' (which is almost impossible to understand unless you've actually experienced it),  It reminds me of where I came from.  It reminds me that art is not about rarefied concert halls or women in five-thousand dollar dresses.  It's about every day living for every day people.  It really is as simple as that.