Country Music and My Wool Socks

Just like a lot of southwestern Texans, I drive a lot of miles and just like a lot of drivers I listen to the radio while I am driving.

Radios in this part of the country tune mostly to country music or Spanish radio. I listen to both, but favor the country, mostly because I don’t know enough Spanish to even get the jist of the lyrics.

Here and now, I am fixin to complain.

Let’s face it. Country music, just like the blues, spends a lot of time investigating love. Lost love, wishing you had love, love in all the wrong places, love me tenderly. I could go on. And don’t get me wrong, I love love. I couldn’t live without it. Nobody can. Like everyone else who listens to the music and the words, I am going to put myself into the situation so that I can identify with the message.

I mean when Clint sings “When I said ‘I do,’ I meant that I will / ’til the end of all time / Be faithful and true, devoted to you / That’s what I had in mind when I said ‘I do.”

Heck yeah.

And when Brad who seems to favor mostly silly songs, stops for a time and croons heartfelt-like, “I can just see you with a baby on the way / I can just see you when your hair is turning gray / What I can’t see is how I’m ever gonna love you more / But I’ve said that before,” what woman on earth didn’t want to hear her man say that, or thinking he’s still saying it now that she is having repeated hot flashes. That’s my point, you see. Love songs, to be really good love songs, need to be ones that no matter whose listening to them, are going to make the listener feel that little tingle in her belly and put the light of hope or memory in her eye.

So what’s my complaint? The lyrics increasingly are singing to a very narrow niche, the twenty something female body.

Now before you go thinking I’m just an old woman whose body heat is being generated solely due to waning estrogen, let me set you straight.

I was a 20 something once. I know about the sex appeal of jeans ripped in intriguing places and a thin tshirt spread across bra-less breasts. Women know very well when they are dressing for their girlfriends and when they aren’t. There is not a woman in the world who doesn’t like it if she knows she turned a few male heads in a room. While I believe there is always a place for modesty, I am also the first to admit that my observations lead me to believe that men are at least initially attracted to women because God wired men’s eyes to their hearts. And I am all for letting the next generation female roll into the place I vacated,  the middle of a young cowboy’s pickup truck, tanned legs up against his jeaned ones and country music singing about it.

So what do I want?

I want someone to write a country song about my wool socks.

I think we need a song about wool socks.

Because love is about more than being twenty and I have found just how wonderful wool socks can be.

It took me a long time to find wool socks. And I might not have appreciated them when I was 20. They mold around my feet, warm and cozy, every time I wear them. They don’t show off my cute red painted toenails and no one’s going to replace them for sexy patterned tights underneath a cowgirl skirt.  But none of that bears on a conscious choice for wool socks because once you’ve experienced them, you can hardly wait for a cold day.

Yeah, that’s what I am talking about.

You see where I am going? If a hot red dress speaks of 20 something love, well I am thinking my wool socks speak of another kind of love that is meant for the long haul. One that any of us riding the roads around Texas, walking the sandy streets of some far away country, or sitting in a highrise working the spreadsheet need to be reminded that it’s worth singing about.

Real love and wool socks. True that, baby.

(Get the smart ones, they are worth the extra money.)