Well, my name's John Lee Pettimore
Same as my daddy and his daddy before
You hardly ever saw Grandaddy down here
He only came to town about twice a year
He'd buy a hundred pounds of yeast and some copper line
Everybody knew that he made moonshine
Now the revenue man wanted Grandaddy bad
He headed up the holler with everything he had
It's before my time but I've been told
He never come back from Copperhead Road
Now Daddy ran the whiskey in a big black Dodge
Bought it at an auction at the Mason's Lodge
"Johnson County Sheriff" painted on the side
Just shot a coat of primer, then he looked inside
Well, him and my uncle tore that engine down
I still remember that rumblin' sound
Well, the sheriff came around in the middle of the night
Heard mama cryin', knew something wasn't right
He was headed down to Knoxville with the weekly load
You could smell the whiskey burnin' down Copperhead Road
I volunteered for the Army on my birthday
They draft the white trash first, 'round here, anyway
I done two tours of duty in Vietnam
And I came home with a brand new plan
I take the seed from Columbia and Mexico
I plant it up the holler down Copperhead Road
Well, the DEA's got a chopper in the air
I wake up screaming like I'm back over there
I learned a thing or two from ol' Charlie, don't you know
You better stay away from Copperhead Road
Copperhead Road . . .
~ Steve Earle
On the road again, on our way to visit dear friends on Hilton Head Island, contemplating a song for the blog. We pass a sign that says "Copperhead Road." So, of course, I took it as a sign (pun intended). Now, the Copperhead Road of which Steve Earle sings is in Tennessee. I'm in South Carolina, but hey, it's Steve Earle, and it's a damn good song! You can find it on the album of the same name, released in 1988, the same year that Steve Earle spent some time in a Dallas jail, charged with assaulting a policeman. Steve Earle is a complicated man. He recently became divorced from his seventh wife.
The song, of course, tells a story, and that story draws a parallel between Prohibition of the 1920s and the controversy over marijuana, which has been with us for decades. Earle's protagonist, John Lee Pettimore, learned a thing or two from his time in Vietnam, and one of the things he learned from "Charlie' (the Viet Cong) was how to take down your oppressor, usually by stealthy and covert means. But his time in Nam also introduced him to the benefits of cannabis, an issue about which we are still arguing. But like Prohibition, making the substance illegal (and thereby collecting revenue from those who defy that law), does nothing to stop the proliferation of the product. And now that Trump has today declared the opioid crisis a "national emergency," my guess is that this will enable Jeffrey Beauregard Sessions to pursue his agenda to impose federal law on those states that have legalized marijuana. As if that will do anything to help those who become addicted to painkillers. Let's see if Big Pharma is called on the carpet. Place your bets.
Meanwhile, Copperhead Roads exist all over the country, people defying the law, making their moonshine, growing their pot, trying to survive. Whatcha gonna do about it, huh?
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| John Lee Pettimore's cabin. (Just kidding.) |
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