When a Southern Woman Rambles... by L. Avery Brown (ebook reader for surface pro txt) 📕

Back then I could never have imagined a channel devoted to cartoons...those were things you only got to watch on Saturday mornings. And that was before all the ‘television that educates and informs’ requirements that Saturday morning shows have to adhere to today. There was absolutely nothing educational or informative about Hong Kong Phooey. He was just the number one super guy.

I remember watching television shows and not ‘getting’ the jokes that were somewhat controversial when my family watched Three’s Company and I wondered what was going on in Jack Tripper’s bedroom when he was fortunate enough to get a girl to go in there. I knew it had something to do with s-e-x but it was never said outright. Subtle innuendo was what shows during that time period were best at but for some reason programming executives at the major networks today shy away from shows like Soap which was outrageously funny because it dared to rather sedately, when compared to today’s shows, broach subjects like interracial marriages, homosexuality, and mental health only to embrace shows like Two and a Half Men, another ridiculously funny sitcom that is almost wholly about sex and is about as subtle as a florescent pink tutu on a white elephant.

And ‘reality’ shows in the late 70s and early 80s didn’t exist. There were no ‘beeps’ to keep us from hearing the ‘f’ word being tossed about on a cut-throat cooking show. Nor were there pixilated blurs to keep us from seeing some woman’s nipple as she mud wrestles another woman whose bikini bottom gets tugged off her svelte ‘I’ve not eaten real food for 25 days’ body in a battle for immunity all because they want to win a big money prize. (You know, something about that statement is so very wrong)

No...back then we lived in an age of variety shows like Donny and Marie and Hee Haw. The humor was sophomoric and the song and dance numbers were bubble gum flavored and looked like they had been choreographed by Bobby and Sissy during their breaks from the Lawrence Welk Show.

But those days are over. They’ve gone the way of roof top antennas and analogue broadcasting. Now we live in a high tech, high speed digital world where the faster we can be instantly gratified is the goal of every programming director and ad executive. One day, in a not too distant future, I imagine people will close their eyes and watch Survivor, Gray’s Anatomy, or some other ‘classic’ show being broadcast directly to their optic nerves via a super-micro chip and chuckle as they think of what it must have been like way back when my daughter was a little girl and had to watch HDTV and only had 150 channels to pick from.

Having grown up in the South I always knew there were some things that were unique to the region. Southern fried chicken, biscuits, and sweet iced tea immediately come to mind. Yes, I realize that all of those tasty things can be and often are prepared outside the invisible boundary between the South and everywhere else but there’s something special about them when they’re made the old fashioned way and enjoyed at Sunday dinner after a good heart-felt sermon delivered at a house of worship.

When I was a little girl nothing beat a Sunday that ended with a meal which included those three things especially when the day included one other thing...the Gospel Hour—a regionally broadcast early Sunday morning television show that was filled with nearly 60 minutes of serious gospel music.

Many was the Sunday that I’d wake up to the sounds of something inspirational like ‘What a Friend We Have in Jesus’ being sung by a quartet as the smell of bacon and eggs being fried in a cast iron skillet and biscuits baking in the oven filled the air.

I remember being 9 years old and watching the singers as they clutched their ultra thin corded microphones and smiled broadly into the camera offering their smooth spiritually uplifting 4-part harmonies to the world (or at least the world that was close enough to pick up the regionally broadcast signal). I can still hear the sound of my father’s voice as he sang along with the upbeat tunes. And I was always so impressed because no matter what song was sung, he knew it...and if you know anything about good old fashioned Southern gospel music, it’s that there are 100s maybe even 1000s of songs.

But, to be honest, my interest was not in the music. Because after hearing what was essentially the same rousing organ-backed, 4 count refrains, about the glory of God and the kindness of Jesus wherein the words had been rearranged again and again, they all sounded the same to my youthful ears. Rather my interest was in the people who actually sang the catchy ditties.

I remember sitting in my father’s chair in our den watching the local CBS affiliate, WBTV, and staring in awe at the various singing groups that graced the tiny stage with its mustard yellow carpet and lattice work backdrop which had been decorated with strings of fake ivy interwoven along the criss-cross pattern. But the periphery details weren’t what really caught my eye. No. It was the singers themselves because they weren’t exactly barbershop quartets.

It didn’t take me too long to figure out that there was a definite make-up to the foursomes. The members of the groups were more often than not, related to one another either by blood or marriage. And they were set up as 2 women/2 men or 1woman/3 men or 4 men...but never 4 women which I can only assume had something to do with the need for a bass singer. And now that I think of it, I cannot recall ever seeing 1 man and 3 women engaged in harmonious union but I’m not quite sure. (Of course, now that I reread that statement...it sounds as if I’m describing something a bit more risqué than it was!)

As for the women they had a mystique about them that started with their ‘beauty pageant hair’. Their coifs were painstakingly teased high enough that they could provide shelter for a family of wrens. But somehow I imagine all the Miss Breck hairspray it took to get the enormous things to achieve and maintain such heights would probably have killed the poor things. By the way, Miss Breck was the premiere hairspray of the 1970s. Looking back now, I cannot help but wonder how much smaller the hole in the ozone layer would be if those ladies had forgone using the CFC propelled hair stabilizer and opted for the smooth, straight ‘Marcia Brady’ look.

That was the hair style I had but it wasn’t my choice because apparently God had decided long before I was born that I needed to be the one member of my family to have straight as a stick, fine, limp hair and brown eyes so He fiddled around with my genes until He got just the combination He was looking for. I think it was His way of saying, ‘There’s nothing that can be done in a test tube that I can’t do better and a heck of a lot cheaper.’

But my amazement with these gospel songbirds did not start at their hair line and go up. Heavens no! Those women were whole package deals because one simply cannot have a marvelous hairstyle without also wearing the finest of fashions. Granted the women did wear identical clothing which helped to lend to the church choir charm they exuded as a whole but these weren’t your typical choir robes. Not in the slightest.

In fact, I suppose that what they wore might have been considered haute couture in the world of gospel music. They always sported floor length pastel colored polyester dresses with long sleeves, ruffled collars, and ribbon-sashed waistlines. And incidentally, the ribbons as well as the other ‘frills’ on the dresses, were always in slightly darker pastel shade.

The finishing touch to the look was the makeup the ladies wore. Makeup they took a great deal of time and effort to get just right. It is evident that ‘the look’ was not quite complete to them unless their faces looked every bit as lovely as that which they were wearing. And nothing finishes off a look like frosted blue eye shadow...LOTS of frosted blue eye shadow and ‘cherry blossom pink’ blush applied a little more than sparingly to the apples of the cheeks.

And when those women walked onto the stage dressed to impress, I always expected Karen Carpenter to come out from behind the lattice work and break out into ‘We’ve Only Just Begun’ but that never happened.  Oh, there is no doubt that those women were quite impressive to look at but I would be remiss if I did not mention the men and their savvy fashions because I seriously doubt we’ll ever have another era where a man could wear that many frills and get complemented on his hip stylishness!

Just like their female counterparts, the look for the men started with their hair...hair which I thought looked as though it had been pulled out of a plastic mold and glued to their heads with some sort of adhesive that could keep it in place even if they went tiptoeing through a wind tunnel. I guess it had something to do with the shellac based version of Dippity-Do that they used to make their hair look like it had been styled by the love child of Vidal Sassoon and Jimmy Swaggart.

The clothes they wore were cut from the same soft pastel colored polyester that had been used to make the women’s frocks. And these men donned some of the finest frilled shirts and tuxedos ever fashioned from synthetically processed material in shades of dusty rose or carnation pink, or maybe even sage green. Though if I’m being honest, a soft powder blue pseudo-cloth tux with the coat buttoned at the waist always made for a good look because it went along famously with the eye shadow worn by the female members of the group. And no Sunday morning television worthy suit was ever complete without the slightly darker matching vest, cummerbund, and bowtie with a pair of shiny white leatherish looking Jarman shoes.

In the end, when those ladies and gentlemen came together and their dulcet tones filled the airwaves, it was quite impressive if for no other reason than the sheer fact that there was never a horrific fire at the television station caused by someone standing a little too long underneath the harsh studio lights. And thankfully I never heard of a quartet being burned alive because of a hairspray ‘touch up’ near a lit cigarette. Can you even begin to imagine what would have become of all those good God fearing singers if either of those things had happened?

I know I did! Because even at such a tender age, I knew what happens to polyester when it burns. It melts and contorts but