Chinaberry Sidewalks
Rodney Crowell
Language: English
Pages: 272
ISBN: 0307740978
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
In a tender and uproarious memoir, singer-songwriter Rodney Crowell reveals the good, the bad, and the ugly of a dirt-poor southeast Texas boyhood.
The only child of a hard-drinking father and a holy-roller mother, acclaimed musician Rodney Crowell was no stranger to bombast. But despite a home life always threatening to burst into violence, Rodney fiercely loved his mother and idolized his blustering father, a frustrated musician who took him to see Hank Williams, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash perform. Set in 1950s Houston, a frontier-rough town with icehouses selling beer by the gallon on payday, pest infestations right out of a horror film, and the kind of freedom mischievous kids dream of, Chinaberry Sidewalks is Rodney's tribute to his parents and his remarkable youth. Full of the most satisfying kind of nostalgia, it is hardly recognizable as a celebrity memoir. Rather, it's a story of coming-of-age at a particular time, place, and station, crafted as well as the perfect song.
with being seated in a restaurant. Luckily, two drive-in eateries on the east side of Houston, Prince’s on Wayside Drive and Christian’s on Market Street, were, by design, indifferent to my parents’ inability to grasp simple etiquette. Specializing in hamburgers, gulf shrimp, chicken livers, French fries, and soggy onion rings—all of it fried fast, served fast, and eaten even faster in the comfort of your own automobile—both establishments catered to their social inadequacies. And the price was
right. Dinner for three for less than five dollars gave a man making $1.65 an hour a shot at a little high living now and then. My preference, though, were the concession stands at the Little League ballpark and the Market Street Drive-In Theater, corn dogs, snow cones, popcorn, cherry Cokes, and slowpoke suckers being more to my liking than burgers and fries. My mother had no interest in the culinary arts, but she did have a knack for producing edible meals when there was nothing to be found in
made sure my parents were in bed for the night, I slipped out the back door and found he hadn’t moved. “Dabbo,” I croaked, “why you still layin’ under—” “Sssh.” He cut me off, placing an eight-year-old finger over his mouth. “I knew you’d come back,” he whispered. “You gotta go look in Momma and Daddy’s window. If they’re asleep, scratch on W’anne’s screen and get ’er to let me in. If Momma ain’t asleep, I ain’t movin’ an inch.” Ever the dutiful friend, I stole across the street barefoot and in
piano to the front edge of the stage. And from the moment he kicked into the boogie-woogie intro to “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On,” the place went wild. Ducktailed Jake City Rebels dived onto the dance floor, and poodle-skirted Connie Francis look-alikes ran on tiptoes through three inches of water to do the dirty bop with them. Lightning bolts exploded behind the concession stand and in the trees across the river. Nobody cared. An Eddie Cochran clone tore off his shirt, fell to his knees, and
visions of a beautiful boy with curly black hair, though I knew these imaginings were the product of my lifelong wish to have a big brother. Nevertheless, I was taking her claims as seriously as she was. Claudia and I were married on what would have been my parents’ fifty-sixth wedding anniversary. After the ceremony, my mother took my face in her hands, as she often did when she had something important to say. “I need you to listen to me now, Rodney. My work here is done. I don’t need to worry