Installation Hymn for Rev. Jessica Vaughan Lower (unused)

I'm ecstatic! I'm enthralled!
I'm about to be installed!
There is joy and love and rapture in my soul!
When my name is writ in gold
With the Presbyters of old,
I will say a blessing o'er the casserole!

Casserole! (Casserole!)
Casserole! (Casserole!)
I will say a blessing o'er the casserole! (Casserole!)

Grab yourself a paper plate
And a plastic fork and wait
While I say a blessing o'er the casserole!

Zoomer Roberts
28 October 2013

George Jones Retrospective

Broadcast on KTEP, 18 May 2013
Hosted by Gregg Carthy & Zoomer Roberts

Click Here to Listen

Roberts Family History

LISTEN HERE!
 

Read by my Grandmother Roberts
Recorded by Gil and Anna Wright circa 1955.

Hank Williams 60th & 90th Anniversaries Retrospective

Listen to part 1
Listen to part 2

KTEP "Folk Fury" radio broadcast, 26 January 2013
A celebration of Hank Williams' recorded legacy
Edited by Zoomer Roberts
Hosted by Gregg Carthy and Zoomer Roberts

Woody Guthrie Centennial Retrospective

Listen to part 1
Listen to part 2

KTEP "Folk Fury" radio broadcast, 11 August 2012
A celebration of Woody Guthrie's recorded legacy
Edited by Zoomer Roberts
Hosted by Gregg Carthy and Zoomer Roberts

The Pollen Is Appallin'

There's no appeasin' the reason for sneezin'
The season is seizin' the land and the seas 'n'
The flowers and the trees 'n' the birds and the bees 'n'
When Hades is freezin' I'll rise from my knees 'n'
Embrace the cool breeze in its autumnal teasin'
And die from my wheezin'.

22 March 2009

Gran

My Grandmother Roberts lived in or around Sulphur Springs, Texas for over 70 years. When she was widowed and all her children had moved away, she stayed put. We saw her for a few days every summer, and one year all the kids and grandkids convened at Aunt Gwen's house in Garland to have Christmas with her, but that was it. Every year she sent me a birthday card with a dollar bill and a stick of Wrigley's chewing gum in it.  A move to a house on Aunt Anna's property in Wimberley was short-lived. She returned to Sulphur Springs and stayed there until she died. She rented rickety frame houses -- the kind they used to move on flatbed trailers -- and clung to her stuff: a kitchen safe, a chiffarobe, boxes of ancient telegrams. It smelled old. She had extension cords plugged into the kitchen light bulb socket. She wrote long letters with a fountain pen, wore out a King James Bible, listened to her Zenith table radio, and sat on her front porch and watched the cars, people, and weather go by. She kept a bottle of wine around for medicinal purposes, stashed under the sink behind the Bab-O so the preacher wouldn't see it when he came to call. She stayed there, and she stayed, and she stayed.

She was the only one of my grandparents still living when I was born, so this is all of the grandparent/grandchild experience I've known. I see a lot of her in my own makeup, and that's okay. I came by it honestly.

She died on this date in 1976, six days after her 91st birthday. My brother and I drove to Sulphur Springs to bear the pall. She's still there. She stayed there.

13 June 2011

When my brother Don was about 16, he ought an old Hudson for $50. Daddy gave him "driving lessons," which amounted to Daddy driving the Hudson out to Newman with us two boys in tow, hoisting a few beers at either the Last Roundup or Club 54, and Don driving us back home. Daddy would always give me money for the jukebox, and I always selected "Tennessee Waltz" by Patti Page. I would tell you today that I liked the chords and the duet harmony (which she also sang). But as a child of 8, I only knew it was real pretty.

Patti Page died yesterday at the age of 85. The evening news played a few measures of that old record as part of the story, and I thought of my brother, and my father, and the Hudson, and Newman, and the vast expanse of desert that existed between the city limits and the state line a half-century ago. All of it is gone now, except for that song -- and my memories.