Vic Socotra

16 July 2009

Across the Great Divide

(Conway Twitty Commemorative .45)

I am on a bunch of mailing lists, as I am sure you are. The Democratic Party got ahold of me through my shameless boosterism of the candidacy of Governor Bill Richardson for the highest office in the land, and will not let go.

They have, in turn, shared me with the ACLU and the Drug Policy Alliance, or perhaps it is the other way around.

The Republicans have been more distant, for which I thank them, although there are some odd manifestations of the culture wars that show up periodically. One of them arrived last week, before the adventure at Donk’s L’il ole Opry, and it made me suspicious, since there are no coincidences in this life, only parallel inevitabilities.

That is what surprised me the most, since I have not thought about Conway Twitty in years, and then there he was, right in the mail. It is another of the groups with which I have a passing acquaintance, the “America Remembers” group of Ashland, Virginia.

Ashland is due west of the Northern Neck, by the way, about a hundred miles. They think that as a plutocrat, I am interested in the acquisition of commemorative firearms. I do not know how they came about that notion, but for some reason they thought I might be interested in the opportunity to own a .45 caliber Colt semi-automatic M-1911A pistol, with no less than five images of Conway Twitty at pivotal moments in his epic career etched on the slide in real 24 carat gold.

It is a limited issue of 300 weapons, or just about one for everyone in the audience at Donk’s, and I carefully filed the literature away in that special place I reserve for mysteries.

I do not think Conway Twitty was ever on the Donk’s Stage. I peered at the pictures at the snack bar, and could not find a glossy representation of his You will remember the great Twitty, I am sure. Inspired by Elvis, young GI Harold Lloyd Jenkins invented a name and became the most successful country music male vocalist of the 20th century.

I recall him mostly as an icon of kitsch, but he had early success as a Rockabilly artist before concentrating his dulcet voice on his core demographic, rural white folks with the usual troubles of the heart and bottle.

We all share those to some degree, and that is who was at Donk’s. The theater was packed, but in a nice way. There were plenty of kids, and many retired folks. It was clearly a couples night, and an inexpensive dinner-and-a-show event held every two weeks in the season.

I doubt that Mathews has enough folks to fill the auditorium, which is why the theater went broke long ago. It sat empty for five years after the sad showing of “Nashville Music,” the last film shown there.

My pal leaned over and whispered, sotto vocce, “ Uncle Jimmy is the guy who started the place- that is him in the bib overalls with the sequin trim.” My pal pointed at a stout man at stage left.

“Apparently Jimmy had been to the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville twice, and returned to Mathews imbued with the fervor that he could bring country music to Tidewater. He was from town, and the empty Donk’s theater seemed to cry out to him.”

“It is a great idea,” I whispered back, spilling some popcorn. “Every town in America had a show of some kind. This is a link to a tradition that is as old as the Republic.”

“Yeah. Jimmy went to the Widow Donk and pitched his idea of opening up a show at the theater, and she said it was OK with her. Typical country operation; everyone had dayjobs, and the whole town pitched in to clean and paint the place. They called it The COUNTRY JAMBOREE for years.”

“It seems like they were trying for something as grand as the Oprey. They had a local radio station that broadcast the shows live, and the house band has been here since1978.”

I looked at the sign to stage right that proclaimed them to be “The Shades of Country.”

“They never turned that corner, but the Oprey became a tradition down here, part of the fabric of Tidewater life.”

The house lights went down, and Uncle Jimmy advanced to center stage.

A hush fell over the crowd. The three-hour epic journey into the heart of country music was about to begin.

Close Window