Best Country Song Ever

I've been a country music fan since the early 1950s when my family turned on the Grand Old Opry every Saturday night on the radio. I remember when I heard Hank Williams had died and I felt that I knew him even though I was only 9 or 10 years old.

The first country song I ever heard on the radio was a Carter Family song and I don't remember which one it was, but I'm thinking Wildwood Flower. The simplicity and hill country twang captured my imagination of how music and words teamed to make us feel a certain way. For me, that was less lonely. Living on a variety of farms, being lonely was the order of the day. Country music on the radio took me down those country roads, away from the loneliness, even if only in my mind.

Through the years, country music morphed into country western and then into country rock and now there can't be a term for what's being played out of Nashville. One thing for sure, it's not my kind of country. So many of the singers seem to enjoy looking and sounding like rednecks, and I just don't care for it. They can do as they like. It's just that I don't have to listen to them and I don't.

Last week, the singer of my favorite country song died. Like so many others, He Stopped Loving Her Today was my favorite country song and George Jones sang it as only he could. I first liked the song when my grandfather passed away and I knew then that he had only that day stopped loving my grandmother. Twenty-five years later, I can't hear that song or even hear about it, without tears coming to my eyes. It's a great song. And if you haven't heard it, check it out on YouTube.

Thanks to George Jones for all the years of good, old fashioned country music, and for the song that always touches my heart when I hear it.

Golf -- Power & Control Rule

It's Sunday afternoon and my son is watching the Masters from Augusta, GA. As the professional golfers give their best to win the green jacket, the tradition of the crowd being quiet continues. But I must ask why.

Football, baseball, soccer, basketball, all of them have spectators stomping and yelling and the players still play. They're not thrown off their game by people talking. What is it about golf where they must maintain such quiet decorum? In my view, it's because that's the way the rich set it up in Scotland way back when, and by god, it's going to continue that way. The rich control and they have the power. And no other sport, exception perhaps being polo, shows the rich strutting their stuff more than they do in golf.

It's such a strange game, yet even blue collar fans seem to like it. They must not realize how little the rich players and others who have country club memberships really feel about them. How can a black person play golf -- think Tiger Woods -- when Augusta and many other such clubs didn't even allow blacks to play there until this century? Perhaps it's because Tiger and other rich blacks don't think of themselves as being black. Think O.J. Simpson and President Barack Obama.

Country clubs and golf courses are strange places indeed. My husband and I moved to a country club, residential, gated community 20 years ago. We lived there for 12 years. If there was one thing we didn't miss when we moved, it was that country club atmosphere with the golf members running the boards of director and everything else. Power and control and the rich -- the ultimate trifecta.

But back to the rule where spectators must be quiet when the golfers hit the little ball, it's certain that I'd be kicked out in seconds if I were along the sidelines (or is there another word for that area)? Anyway, I'd yell out that I like the pink shirt on one of the guys or some other nonsense. And that would be that. Out I'd be, escorted to the sidelines. Wait, that's where I was. I wonder where they would take me. Maybe there's a tea and crumpets table nearby. Not exactly punishment, right? Bring on the clotted cream and strawberry jam.

And maybe, just maybe, the birdies I'd see would be so much more interesting than those that come from the golfers' swings. Anything would be more interesting to me.