Of Old Karaoke Tunes and Slowly Fading Stereotypes

Once I saw a man at a redneck karaoke bar and wondered what on earth he was doing there. He was a head taller and far better dressed than anybody else: white shirt, French cuffs, silk tie. Plus he was the only black man in the place.

He couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket but he was giving it a go, singing old-timey country-western songs with lyrics like:

Tell me why do you drink,
Why do you roll smoke?
Why must you live out
The songs that you wrote?

Turned out he was a big shot with a cable company here in town. He had grown up in one of those tiny places with odd-sounding names in southern Georgia, where his family made quite a bit of money growing Vidalia onions, and where the only songs he every heard were of that Okie-from-Muskogee, Hank Williams Jr. variety.

Soon my wife and I were having one of our periodic barroom disputes. Our new friend took an interest in the matter and waded right into the middle of it. He tried to play peacemaker to no avail, but I was impressed enough by his effort to wake up the next day thinking: Who knew that in this life I’d ever run into a tall, black, Vidalia-onion growing, country-western loving marriage counselor?

It keeps happening. I keep running into people who defy dusty stereotypes, including those of my own invention. You’d think I’d catch on, but no.

A few months ago, I met Baileigh Johnson. She is a journalism student at the University of Central Florida who has been with us here at OH&L for several months now as an intern. She has a soft voice, wispy blonde hair, a gliding gait and what I took to be a languid, what-evar attitude.

Turns out she is tough as nails. She’s a quick study and a dogged researcher who finishes my sentences for me and snatches up story assignments as though I’m passing out winning lottery tickets. She has two bylines in this issue, which is extremely unusual, both of them researched and written on a level I have come to expect from her.

Alas, just as I’m catching up to Baileigh, she’s leaving us. But we have a new columnist. He’s been around town for a while, so you may have heard of him, and you may have registered an impression as to who he is and what he represents. His new column, which will run on the last page of each issue, is likely to change your mind.

I’ve known him for a while myself. Thinking back now, I have fuzzy memory of a time when I realized that either he had changed or I had misjudged him. He was actually a much more interesting person than I had thought. Imagine that.