Twine Time and Suzie

Shotgun Shoot 'em 'fore he run, now

Do the jerk, baby Do the jerk, now Yeah!

Put on yo' high-heel shoes I said, we goin' down here An listen to 'em play the blues We gonna, dig potatoes We gonna, pick tomatoes I said, shotgun Shoot 'em 'fore he run, now Do the jerk, baby Do the jerk, now Yeah! I said it's, Twine time I said it's, Twine time I said it's, Twine time

This ain't Junior Walker and the All Stars digging those proverbial potatoes. No, no, no.....this is Wilmer Alexander and the Dukes pickin' these tomatoes and they pickin' em in the summer of 65 on Wednesday and Friday nights at the Clover Lanes on Monroe Avenue.

Meanwhile out at Bristol Mountain it's the Showstoppers not Ray Charles who got Georgia on their minds. And if ya go down the road a piece to Bengal's you can still catch the Invictas at the hottest club in town where they doin' da hump.

Me? I'm coastin' between all three joints and it was all downhill all the way.

A tree on Merchants Road learned me not to peddle when goin' downhill. No need for additional speed when you goin' fast enough.

What's the rush?

Grab another Jenny Cream. Mix in a Schlitz or a Schmidt's or ten.

Here's to ya Captain. I'm with my boys, I'm with my group. We show up late and we stay late. The bad guys know us and they leave us alone. And there's a dark haired girl named Suzie who always waits for me and who asks nothin' of me and who don't dance with nobody else and who waits for me to ask her to dance. She knows I'm coastin' It's the summer of 65, the fit ain't nowhere near the shan. We thought we knew what was goin' on. It was sho nuff twine time.

Yeah Kennedy was a year and half in the dirt which sucked but the Beatles were gradually changing Camelot to Pepperland via Rubber Soul and Revolver neither of which had hit us yet.

Viet Nam was still far, far away. We had sunshine on cloudy days, we even had the month of May. Nineteen and sixty five.

The government told us we were old enough to drink even though we weren't old enough to vote. We were old enough to register for the draft but that registration still basically meant that we were registering to drink and get into places where we could listen to groups like the Dukes and the Showstoppers and the Invictas.

Places where we could smoke and everybody smoked. We smoked without guilt for the rumors of cancer were still just rumors and smoker's cough was nothing to be ashamed of or worried about. Most people smoked Marlboros or Winstons or Luckys or Camels with a few weirdos like me skipping directly to Newports after the first hint of mint made all the difference.

I remember stopping for a minute at Old Gold spin filters but only for a minute. Smoke filled rooms were everywhere. We called it atmosphere.

Today it's poison. Today kids under eighteen can vote but they can't drink. I don't think anybody has to register for the draft anymore. The army is all volunteer and nobody needs proof that they're eighteen to get into poisonous places anymore. A far cry from Twine Time where we lived in poison and loved it.

So we flash forward/backward to Twine Time. Wilmer and the Dukes are playing "My Girl".

I'm slow dancing with Susie. No matter what else was going on at the time, Susie and I always danced to My Girl. There was usually a lot goin' on. I was drinkin' with my buddies and she was drinkin' with hers.

We were all guys.

They were all gals.

The twain occasionally met when somebody felt like dancing. We guys might be in a big argument about which was more important in judging a pitcher, number of wins...earned run average or strikeouts compared to innings pitched.

God only knows what the girls were arguing about or if they were arguing at all. Every so often, I'd need to take a pause in the arguing/swearing/drinking and that's why God created dancing. I'd go find Susie and ask her to dance. She always said yes, every time, all summer....no matter what her pals were arguing/laughing/agreeing/observing. Susie said yes every time. And no to anyone else...also every time.

The patterns of our dancing were haphazard. I didn't ask her to dance every dance and she didn't want/expect me to. She knew I neeeded to waste a lot of time with the guys I was with and she needed to waste time with her girls.

We wasted a lot of time in the poison of twine and we loved it.

We called it hangin' out or goin' to see Wilmer. How big of a waste was it?

Well I can only remember one conversation that I had with anyone during that entire summer. Everything else is gone...gone to the same place that takes every word we say while we're waiting for a movie to start. In the midst of the haphazard, I did maintain one consistency therefore one lovely memory.

 Every time the Dukes played 'My Girl', I slow danced with Susie.