Honky-Tonky Weekly
#16: Merle Haggard, "If We Make it Through December"
This is the sixteenth edition of Honky-Tonk Weekly, a weekly(ish) column here at the Tropical Depression Substack. You can read previous editions here. Every week, I will listen to and share a country song and write whatever comes to mind. Listen along! This week, we’re making it through December with Merle Haggard.
It was late December when the news came. It was late December when the moon seemed repositioned in a peculiar place one evening. It was late December when they forgot all about it. It was late December when I turned in the necessary paperwork. It was late December and the shopping mall was noisy, like a nest full of brand new baby birds. It was late December when the rumors started. When the grass was out of order and the clouds were upside down. It was late December when everyone began to paint their houses green, as if by some coordinated plan. But there was no plan. They all just settled on the same color on their own. It was late December and the days grew short. It was late December when his dreams began taunting him with red herrings. Literally, I mean. They were the color of cherries and tasted like ash and were portents of nothing at all. There were hundreds of them, and all the little red fishes sang holiday songs in a language he did not know. He worried what it all meant, but his waking life took no notice at all. It was late December when the cavalry arrived. It was late December when somebody let the dogs out. Who let the dogs out, everyone wondered, in late December. It was late December when the shots rang out. It was late December when the shells fell one by one on the cold concrete. It was late December when it all began. It was late December when the calendar finally got pinned to the wall. We can get one good month out of this thing, the thinking went. It was late December when she surrendered, or pretended to surrender, it was hard to say. It was late December when they bundled up to walk around the neighborhood one last time. It was late December when I remembered. It was late December when he rearranged the chairs on the deck. It was late December when the claim was filed. If we can make it through December, they told everyone who would listen, everything’s gonna be all right. It was late December when we agreed to erase the year that was. We agreed on resolutions. We were resolute. It was late December when the reviews came in. When the bill came due. When the snow began to fall. When we sprinkled salt on the steps. When roads became slick enough to worry. When the carolers wore matching ponchos in the rain. It was late December and we were a little bit happy and a little bit sad. It was late December when they put on proper shoes and ventured out into the cold white day. It was late December when everyone began to wonder. When they battened down the hatches. When they made a plan. When they gathered under evergreen trees in well-lit living rooms and let the wrapping paper pile up like offerings and listened to the familiar songs and said to each other, one by one: thank you, thank you, thank you, just like they did every year in late December.
Once upon a time, two thousand years ago or so, there was a penniless beggar in Jericho. His name was Bartimaeus, a fact he held closely within himself, like an amulet. It was the only thing he owned. He had lost his sight some twenty years ago, in circumstances his mind avoided so carefully it was as if he had forgotten altogether. He sat on the ground and held his name within himself, somewhere in his belly, where the hunger was. The hunger was an old red-eyed dog that had been with him for as long as he could remember. He dug his fingers into the sun-warm dust, and then he held out his hands for a quiet while, and then he dug his fingers into the dust again.
Bartimaeus knew the sounds of this place, more deeply than the sighted could. Around him, he heard the shift in tone as roadside chatter turned to gossip, like the urgency of birdsong. What is it, he asked, to everyone and to no one in particular. A healer is coming, they said. They say he is a healer. Bits of dust lifted and fell from the ground with the wind. Bartimaeus heard the voices around him grow louder and then quiet to silence, so silent he could hear the footsteps of the men walking down the road.
And Bartimaeus shouted through the silence: Son of David, have mercy on me! Those around him hushed him and someone kicked him, not gently, in the back. Be quiet, someone said.
But Bartimaeus stood and shouted again: Son of David, have mercy on me! He removed his cloak and dropped it to the ground. He did not know why he did this. He only knew that he did not need his cloak anymore. He heard more commotion and felt hands on his shoulders and he thought they might beat him. This thought did not inspire fear. He understood that he might die there, beaten bloody in the dust. The animal inside him born to resist such a fate was quiet now. He let the hands on his shoulders walk him forward. He braced himself.
Merle Haggard was born just outside of Bakersfield, California, in a little town called Oilsdale, where his family lived in a converted boxcar. He was a wild soul. You have, perhaps, heard these stories. As a young boy, he was in and out of juvenile detention facilities. He was a thief, and he kept getting caught. Then he would escape. He was better at escaping, it seems, than at getting away with it in the first place. His mama tried to raise him better, etc. He rode the freights. He got caught again, escaped again. He drove a potato truck in Modesto for a time. The first show he played, the story goes, was at a Modesto dive called the “Fun Center,” which paid him $5 and free beer. He was 13. Later, he resented telling all the old stories from the hard times before he made it. They don’t want to hear about the easy part, the good days that you did, he told an interviewer from GQ in 2005. They want to hear about the places they haven’t been. The pain they haven’t felt. Then he dutifully told the stories again.
They did not bring Bartimaeus to the road to beat him. They brought him to the healer, who had asked for him after hearing his pleas. Bartimaeus felt the hands lift from his shoulders and heard the men who had guided him to the road walk away. He felt alone until he caught the tail end of a breath on his nose. The healer took his hands. Bartimaeus could feel the labor in the rough skin of the healer’s hands. He could sense the closeness of their faces together but the healer said nothing for a time. Then the healer’s face grew closer still and he asked, in the thinnest of whispers, What do you want me to do for you? Bartimaeus closed his eyes and said, Lord, let me see again. The healer’s breath smelled of a strange spice Bartimaeus could not name. Receive your sight, the healer said, your faith has saved you.
The healer let go of his hands and Bartimaeus could feel the very moment the dirt and perspiration that linked their skins detached. Bartimaeus opened his eyes and it was not the light, but the color, that was almost unbearable in its glory. He looked up and the sky was a vast blue benediction, it was the blue of his body and the blue of his not-body. Bartimaeus felt the redness of his blood traveling through his body. He saw the healer walking away and he followed him. He saw, he saw, he saw, everything, everywhere, in exquisite color.
So went the story. And there were other such stories. We squint, now, but the stories are too spare to see the healer. Perhaps it was the same for Bartimaeus, as his eyes adjusted to their new gift. The healer continued down the road. The stories spread. The crowds grew bigger. Some to see wonders, some to be healed.
That first line—if we make it through December, everything’s gonna be all right, I know—it is nothing special on its own. It’s just Merle. The way he sings it. He’s got this ability.
In late December 1957, Merle got drunk with a buddy in Bakersfield, California. It was Christmas Eve. They cooked up the idea to rob a place called Fred and Gene’s Cafe. But when they were trying to crowbar the back door, they realized it was already open. They snuck on through and quickly discovered an awkward predicament: Turned out, the restaurant was open for business, packed with customers and staff. They quickly got chased out the front door. As robbery attempts go this one seems pretty harmless, but Merle got arrested. He tried to get away by hopping a train, but none were running on Christmas Eve. They locked him up in the Bakersfield jail, where he woke up on Christmas morning, awaiting arraignment. The Bakersfield police were not, I guess, fastidious. The locks were not altogether locked. Merle waited for an opportune moment and walked out the front door. People do not pay close attention, perhaps, in late December. Something in the air, something in the season.
But then he got caught again. He was sentenced to up to fifteen years at the maximum security prison in San Quentin. He wound up doing three years, though no one ever told him just how long he might serve or when he might have a chance for release. That does something to a man’s mind that never heals up right, he wrote in his autobiography. The first time Johnny Cash played San Quentin, Merle was in the audience. It was New Year’s Day, 1959. You have, perhaps, heard that story. There are other stories, from that time. Merle brewed contraband beer that tasted of oranges, and traded it for cigarettes, or to get drunk himself. At night, in his bunk, he heard inmates who were being raped crying in pain. He once saw a man burn to death on a ladder: The five-hundred-gallon vat of starch he was checking boiled over on him, burning his black skin completely white. He saw a man murdered over an insult. He saw horrors, he wrote, too terrible to think about, much less talk about.
He was 19 when he arrived at San Quentin. By his account, he had escaped 17 times by then. I was scared to death, he told another magazine interviewer late in his life. I’d already been in a lot of jails. San Quentin is the last place you go. I wasn’t really that bad a guy. They just couldn’t hold me anywhere else.
To my surprise, Merle Haggard was shorter than me. I met him once, around twenty years ago, in Oxford, Mississippi. He was kind. He had been playing the character of himself for so long that I’m not sure there was much difference between meeting Merle and meeting “Merle.” He told the sort of mildly amusing jokes that make it easy, if not involuntary, to laugh.
When I got married, many years later, I danced with my mother to “Mama Tried.” By that point in the evening, I had taken off my suit and jumped in the pool in my T-shirt and boxers. I think I was still in a T and boxers when we danced; mama tried to raise me better but her pleading I denied, etc. She sang along while we danced. She doesn’t remember this, now, I don’t think. But she likes the story. There are all sorts of things she doesn’t remember. There are all sorts of things she doesn’t say. But then a song will come on the radio and suddenly she starts singing like everything is all right.
I sometimes feel like I’m standing up for the people that don’t have the nerve to stand up for themselves, Merle told GQ. I just enjoyed winning for the loser. I’d never been around anything except losers my whole life. He wasn’t talking about me, or my mom. We’ve been lucky in life in many ways. But then there are the unlucky bits, too. And they help: the songs. The songs help. All of us are losers sometimes. All of us need healing from time to time.
Today is December 31, past Christmas and on our way to the New Year. It is 48 degrees Fahrenheit in Lexington, Kentucky, where I typed most of this. It is 76 degrees in Archer, Florida, where I am typing now, at my mother in law’s house. It is 53 in Little Rock, 71 in New Orleans, 47 in Nashville. Those are a few places I’ve stopped over. We have, just about, made it through December. It is 72 in Tuscon, 39 in Worcester, 37 in Chicago. Those are a few places I’ve passed though. It was the hottest year on record, if you’re keeping score. It is three hours until the ball drops in New York City, where it is currently 43 degrees. We will make resolutions, we will make promises. It’s the coldest time of winter, and I shiver when I see the falling snow. Sometimes the sad songs make us happy. Sometimes there is something in the air, something in the season. My mother in law is celebrating her thirty-sixth wedding anniversary today, New Year’s Eve. I asked if they were doing anything to celebrate. “You’re looking at it,” her husband said. “We’re still here!” she said.
Boy, he makes everything sound like a poem, Iris DeMent said of Merle Haggard. Wherever he was, Merle compulsively scribbled song lyrics out on brown paper bags and then had no memory of having come up with the words. He believed that a man could outrun destiny through spontaneity. That way the devils don’t know which way you’re driving or which route you’re taking. He did not like to be alone. His second wife thought that if she ever satisfied him, he’d be gone. She was right. Why did he get in so much trouble when he was young? Well, he wanted to live like a Jimmie Rodgers song. Wild hair’s all it was, he said.
When Merle was 14, he bought hist first pair of cowboy boots in Amarillo and went to a brothel for the first time. He was initially turned away for being too young, but an older woman stepped up and said, I’ll babysit with him. He never forgot that day. She was wearing a pink dress. He never stopped wearing cowboy boots. It’s a fond memory, he told the GQ scribe. There are certain things you can’t get out of your mind. I guess they’re there because you want them there. Exquisite times. Asked whether he was a new person after the brothel, he replied, Not really. I think the cowboy boots affected me more. I mean, the gal just affirmed what I already knew, but the cowboy boots made a new man out of me.
The way it goes is that the exquisite times are all mixed up with the unlucky bits. The other night, after the kids were asleep, we went outside in the cold to calculate. We examined the calendar. We made a plan. “It will be all right,” you said. “Will it be all right?” you asked. It was late December. I tried to think of something to say but never got past past the cold puff of a consonant. I could see my breath, and then my breath disappeared.