LETTER: Country Roots

To the Editor: Jonathan Steinmetz is right. In regard to his column "A Li'l Confession for Y'all" (DP 10/23/92), I'd like to tell him that he is not the only Penn student who is in love with country music. I've been a fan all my life, but somewhere along the line I strayed from my country roots. But it wasn't hard to find my way back after years of disappointing lyrics and rhythm from blues and rap. I'm not embarrassed to tell anyone. As a matter of fact, I taunt my family with this bit of info as often as I go home. They call me crazy and tell me that I really have weird taste in music. I guess they forgot that we all grew up on "Hee-Haw," Buck Owens and Roy Clark. Somehow my brothers get memory lapses when I remind them that we "lived" for Saturday nights and "Hee-Haw." My mother has somehow blocked her memory to the fact that the next best thing to a glass of cold lemonade on a sizzling hot summer Carolina night was the sound of refreshing blue grass music backed by nature's own band of crickets and hoot owls. And my father just doesn't remember that his father's dream was for one of us to play the banjo and grace him with "some of the best music this side of the Mason-Dixon line." What my grandfather didn't know was that almost a decade later, people would begin to recognize country music as some of the best music on both sides of the Mason Dixon line, as well as in both the United States and Europe. They're finally finding out what we already knew long ago. So the rest of you country music fans out there, don't be shy. "Fess Up!" -- and don't be surprised to find that country music lovers come in all shapes, colors and sizes. I'm proud to say, like Barbara Mandrell, "I was country, when country wasn't cool." Oh yeah, it's okay to say "ain't" instead of "isn't." As in: Don't rock the jukebox, I wanna hear George Jones 'Cause my heart ain't ready For the Rolling Stones. Tammy Allen College '93