No, I am not a country music girl. At least not most of the time.
But for some reason, I got it in my head that I wanted to go hear Bucky Covington when he came to the Glens Falls Civic Center.
It isn't that he is such a great singer, or even great looking.
But I like his story.
A lot.
North Carolina boy, a twin no less, working in a body shop, decides to try out for American Idol.
Very obviously a country singer, he faces tough criticism. He dances around the stage, obviously out of his element, and finishes 8th.
But he is out there touring, singing, making a living, probably having a lot more fun than he was painting cars.
Isn't that the American dream?
So I talked my husband into taking me.
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He is very skinny, and he likes to flip his hair around. He was much better than he was on his Idol days, and very comfortable with the audience. And he was very entertaining.
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Who wouldn't like Bucky Covington?
That's my question.
With a name like that.
Just rolls right off your lips.
Bucky Covington.
Ha!
And then they had someone named Jack Ingram, who was good enough, but bored me to tears.
Then Jo Dee Messina, who has an incredible voice.
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A very talented lady.
Except that her bass was so loud, you could feel it right behind your sternum.
Ouch.
I must be getting old.
Although I did want to dance in the aisle, but my husband said no.
Naysayer.
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Then the headliner, John Michael Montgomery.
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I didn't think I knew who he was, until he started singing.
"I Swear" and "I could love you like that"........
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I guess 15 years ago, he was at his peak. But he was still pretty good. Just older, and a little more haggard. :)
And that is my country music foray for this decade, and maybe the next.
Yesterday found me and my mother in the car on the way to my daughter's.
My mother said she had been awake late the night before, reliving some of her life.
I wasn't sure what that was about at first.
Seems she was remembering my father, and when they first met.
In England.
She was in the ATS, or the women's English army.
My father was very dashing. Almost handsome.
She said, "I trusted him."
And, "We were so much in love".
After they had known each other for 7 months, she asked her mother to sign the papers saying she could marry this American sailor, her mother said, "I'm signing this with my tears."
I asked her, "Did you realize that you had to leave your home and go to the United States. Did you think that through?"
She said, "No., I didn't realize until I was in my 40's, then I knew how much I had hurt my mother."
Fast forward 7 years later. My mother was now a naturalized citizen, with a hard working husband, and a five year old..........me.
It was 1952.
She and my grandmother were saving, to get my grandmother here, for a visit.
But then my mother started waking up with a worried feeling, and she began crying a lot. My father asked her why, she said, "I want my mother."
He assured her that she would see her mother, in 1954, as planned. But it wasn't enough.
My mother got sicker, and cried more often.
She wrote her mother, and said, buy a ticket here, and then when you get here, by the time you are ready to go back, I will have saved enough for your return ticket.
My grandmother went to London to get her ticket, and her passport. A poor woman, who had worked in the fields picking vegetables her whole life, she had never been to London. The parishioners of the Salvation Army called ahead, and an Army member in London met her, and took her everywhere she needed to go.
She got the passport, but they would not sell her a one way ticket to the United States.
When my mother heard, she was distraught.
That same day, my father called her from work. My father who hated loans. Didn't do them.
Until now.
"I borrowed the money. We'll buy the round trip ticket."
Three months later, my father drove to NYC alone, to pick my grandmother up.
She stayed with us for 7 months. She called me "ducky". That's all I remember about her.
A few months after she got back, she was diagnosed with leukemia, and she died early in 1954.
My mother started crying when she got to this place in her story.
"It was a miracle," she said.
"A miracle. If she had not come when she did, I would never have seen her again."
We are never ready to lose our mothers. Are we?
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