I said, Grandpa what's this picture here?
Its all black and white; it aint real clear; is that you there?
He said, yeah, I was eleven; times were tough back in '35.
That's me and Uncle Joe just tryin to survive a cotton farm in the Great Depression.

If it looks like we were scared to death,
like a couple of kids just trying to save each other,
you should've seen it in color.


On an unofficial den outing this afternoon, I drove my six-year-old Cub Scout (and my nine-year-old civilian) out of town to a cornfield in Central Texas. On another busy weekend in another hectic month in another insanely harried semester, honestly, I was not looking forward to this time-consuming excursion. Leaving Waco in caravan, traveling north on I-35, we exited the interstate at Elm Mott, traveling northeast on FM 308 past Leroy. A few miles short of Birome, we cut-off onto an unpaved gravel county road and proceeded to the Kaska Family Farm for some bucolic diversion.

Like many of us, I have been distracted lately. I spent the first half hour in transit rolling down the highway at 88 feet per second, listening to the final minutes of the Red River Shootout on my car radio, and generally ignoring the children inside and the changing landscape outside my air-conditioned sedan. I spent the first few minutes on the "farm" paying the price of admission, scoping out the "attractions," and surveying the lay of the land--but not really seeing, listening, or feeling.

I was stressed, depressed, and detached. So much so, in fact, that I was blind and deaf to the land. This is somewhat unusual for me. While I have absolutely no inherited skill as a farmer, I tend toward sentimentality when I traverse the byways of Central Texas. In an almost mystical way, I often hear the echoes of generations of share croppers and hard-scrabble forebears when I travel the back roads of my ancestral home.

At some point, thankfully, amazingly, on a warm fall day under a shimmering blue sky, I finally heard the rustling of corn stalks. Awakening from my stupor, I heard the soft but reassuring and immutable pastoral song of life:

This is the real world. This is the natural world. Life began here. Life is renewed here. Life is grown here.

These rolling hills will be here when the titans of Wall Street are long gone.

These are the verdant pastures that have comforted the soul of man for millennia. This natural cathedral is the antidote to the Valley of the Shadow of Death.

After taking in deep breaths of this reinvigorating and cleansing fresh air, we headed back toward town. This time, though, with our windows down and senses open to the sights and sounds and smells of the land. We did not try to connect with the interstate on the return trip. Instead, we turned left at Leroy, passing a rural cemetery and the Baptist/Methodist Church, where the sign read: "WHAT ROLE ARE YOU PLAYING IN GOD'S UNIVERSE?"

Country music is appropriate on these farm-to-market roads, as it so often celebrates the interconnectedness and fragility of the human experience.

Ohh and this one here was taken over seas,
in the middle of hell in 1943, in the winter time;
you can almost see my breath.
That was my tail gunner, ole Johnny Magee.
He was a high school teacher from New Orleans.
And he had my back, right through the day we left.

If it looks like we were scared to death,
like a couple of kids just trying to save each other,
you should've seen it in color.

A picture's worth a thousand words,
but you can't see what those shades of gray keep covered,
you should've seen it in color.


Unlike other forms of popular music, country and western presupposes a value system based on the cyclical beauty of the agrarian life as well as the innumerable and wholly unpredictable dangers of the natural world. Country music trades on a community memory of a time in which families were at once fragile and dependent but also rugged and self-sufficient.


Passing silos, tractors, and farm houses, we stretched our thirty-minute return trip into forty-five. Awakening from a modern funk, it was good to be reminded visually that there were, of course, still vast expanses of land just outside my city limits. Land where real people grew food and raised livestock and faced the trials of a countryside still untamed in many ways.

And the songs about Jesus, redemption, making it through the hard times, and the hand of God in the lives of good folks kept coming.

This one is my favorite one.
This is me and grandma in the summer sun,
all dressed up the day we said our vows.
You can't tell it here, but it was hot that June,
and that rose was red, and her eyes were blue,
and just look at that smile--I was so proud.
That's the story of my life, right there in black and white.

And if it looks like we were scared to death.
like a couple of kids just trying to save each other,
you should've seen it in color.

A pictures worth a thousand words, but you can't see what those shades of gray keep covered.

You should have seen it in color.


We are a people with a tradition. We are a people of the land. We have faced hard times. We have survived hard times. The Good Lord willing, and the Creek don't rise, we will persevere through this time of difficulty.

These people of the land, "clinging to their God and their guns," are fighters. They have much to tell us. We should listen more.

For your viewing pleasure: Jamey Johnson - In Color: Video.