Читать книгу Live Forever - Mylon Le Fevre - Страница 22

Determined to shoot something, I took aim at the next rabbit the dogs jumped. But my buckshot didn’t hit the

rabbit. It hit one of my family’s prized hunting dogs in the behind.

After about three flips, that poor dog never was the same again! Needless to say, my family stayed off my back

about shooting animals from then on. I still went hunting with them every Thanksgiving, though. I even bought

all the camouflage clothes, gear and boots. But I only fired my shotgun one time in about 20 years.

After those famous hunting trips, famished from tramping up and down the Tennessee hills all day, we returned

to another homemade feast, fresh from the farm. We’d gorge again until we were all in pain and Aunt Maude

brought out her famous banana pudding. When we were too stuffed to swallow another bite, we’d meander out

to the front porch just to breathe and rest while the women cleaned up the kitchen.

PICKIN’ ON THE PORCH

That’s when the time tested routine, the ordinary moments that would have such an extraordinary effect on the

rest of my life, would begin. Somebody would pull out a harmonica, a banjo, or a mandolin, and the magic

would start. Because music was at the core of our family, almost every member played some instrument. One

distant cousin brought his big bull bass all the way from California, strapped to the top of his old woody station

wagon. As everybody began tapping their feet to the hillbilly rhythms on that hollow wooden porch, it sounded

like the best drummer in Dixie to me.

The less experienced musicians would start these “picking and grinning” sessions. Once they played for a while,

my father, his brother, and the other really gifted players would pull out their axes: fiddles, guitars, twelve

strings, mandolins, and an accordion. The result was some of the best Gospel bluegrass music you ever heard.

Good doesn’t even begin to describe it. Or then again, maybe it does. There, on Aunt Maude’s porch, without any

blaze of glory, I heard sounds so good they captured my heart. And in the Tennessee twilight as the stars began to

shine, I made a decision that would end up taking me places beyond my wildest dreams: I’d spend the rest of my

life making music.

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