Blues-Paved Road

It turns out Granddaddy Bob
is a fan of jazz and blues.
It turns out Granddaddy Bob
was a serious wandering tomcat
in his early onset of the Slayter Dark Streak.
A cool cat.
He rode the rails with the best of them
but claims to have been no more
than a stringer, a fill-in.
Bass. Guitar. Sax.
Whatever the need,
he willed himself to fill it.
Being there, among "them"
was both need and gift.

A lot of people in other parts of the country
didn't know the Piedmont blues tunes, like
"When You Kill the Chicken
Save Me the Head,"
until my very own Granddaddy Bob
carried them around with him.
"I quit because it about killed my mama.
Or she pretended it did." He shrugged.
"That's the same thing with women, Boy.
If they can't put the brakes on you one way,
they'll do it another. But this--"
He held yellow sheets in the air,
punctuated his feelings with them.
"These were my pride and joy."

"One of your roads not taken."
I put that in. It seemed to fit
about as well as any case
I have ever considered.

Granddaddy Bob nodded.
"The road not taken for me. The road.
If you ever find one
you want more than anything in the world,
Boy, take it. Don't let anybody
or anything detour you. Take your road.
The one unfolding in front of you
all clean and new and shining. Your road."

Granddaddy Bob handed over the yellowed paper.
I put his songs on the computer.
It's just the words, the lyrics,
but I've been picking at the guitar
he bought me several years back
when I was still ignorant of
why he'd give me such a gift.
I search the Web for places to try,
even entered his "Delta Woman Blues
in UNISONG's International Song Contest
(lyrics category), haven't heard the results yet.

Wouldn't it be rad wild
if Granddaddy Bob caught fire
as a bluesman in his late eighties?
Oscar Matthews, Durham's "Mayor of Main Street,"
wasn't that old when Randy Travis recorded
"Oscar The Angel," by Don Schlitz, about him.
Oscar bummed the streets
singing, begging, and prophesying.
He'd give you a quarter if you didn't have one for him
and was always happy. He recently died at only 78.
I am determined to unroll
Granddaddy Bob's road before him again,
pave it with blues music, not yellow brick.

Native North Carolinian and former college president Dr. Lynn Veach Sadler won an Extraordinary Undergraduate Teaching Award, a civil rights award, the Distinguished Women of North Carolina Award for Education, and the Barringer Award for Exceptional Service from the North Carolina Society of Historians. Her academic publications include five books and some sixty-eight articles. Now a full-time creative writer of poetry, fiction, and plays, she has a full-length poetry collection forthcoming. She won a Silver Medal in 2005 in the the Pinter Prize for Drama, and in 2006 won the Abroad Writers Contest/Fellowship (France).

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