Gillian Welch
Time (The Revelator)
Acony Records

Wow...mmm...nice record... But back to Sugar Creek Road:
Bud and Lois lived next door to me all through my preteen years. They had a dog named Sin, short for Cindy, and three troublesome boys. Bud was a garbage man. Actually, that's just how I remember it -- he really worked in a factory -- where'd I get that from anyway? And Lois drove bus with my mom.

I've got schoolbus in my blood. It might explain my love for mass transportation. And disapproval of private combustible vehicles. My father ran the local school bus system for a while and both he and mom sometimes drove those long and bulky black and yellow beasts of public burden. I even worked for a couple summers there as a kid. Painting and buffing. Fixing the torn brown and green seats.

They were Thomas Built Buses, built in North Carolina. My folks would fly out to High Point and drive two back. Once in a while when an old one died it was time to get a new one and off they'd go.

Sounds pretty, doesn't it? I wished I could've gone.

Driving through the Smokies with 20 seats behind you. All new and empty. And mountains all around you.

It's the kind of picture hanging on the wall in my head when Gillian and David start to singing. Blue grass and hilly and awful darned pretty and all of that invention to carry you along.

Copyright © 2001 Alice Kenner