When I left home: my story (2015)

Before I Left Home

Light

It was near the end of the 1940s when we finally got an electric line. I was twelve. There was one little light bulb that hung down from the ceiling. Didn’t take much of a storm to knock out the power, though. Fact is, that the roof of our shack was so flimsy that any heavy rain created big leaks. Mama had tubs lined up all over to catch the pouring water. Wasn’t till much later that I learned what it was like to trust the roof over my head.

The introduction of that little light bulb in our cabin didn’t improve life much. But our first piece of electrical equipment, a beat-up used phonograph that played 78 records, changed everything. I thank God that my daddy loved the blues and wanted to hear music when he came out from the fields. I thank God that my daddy had this one record by John Lee Hooker called “Boogie Chillen.” That’s the record that did it.

In 1949, about when I turned thirteen, “Boogie Chillen” was the biggest hit in the country among black folk—it was by far the biggest hit in the Guy household. Wasn’t anything more than one guy playing his electric guitar by himself. Notes were simple. Words were simple. Words didn’t even rhyme. But the groove got to me. The mood was so strong that after the song had done played, you had to play it over. When the man said, “Mama told Papa, let the boy boogie woogie,” I figured that this John Lee Hooker had to be talking about me. I figured that one way or the other I had to get me a guitar and learn “Boogie Chillen.” I knew that inside that song was a mystery I had to know. Once I figured out how the notes worked together, once I memorized all the words and sang the song myself, I’d have a key that would open a door. Didn’t know what was on the other side of that door—but I had to find out.

I’d wait for Christmas—not because there were presents, but because Coot was coming. Like everyone who had a guitar, Coot had figured out “Boogie Chillen” and didn’t mind when I asked him to play it six or seven times in a row. I’d watch him real careful. Didn’t miss nothing. And when he went to drink the wine my daddy had set aside for him, I picked up the guitar and tried to play it myself. My mind heard it, but my fingers couldn’t coordinate it. I fumbled. I was frustrated, and when Coot came back, a little happier for the wine, I asked to play the thing again.

“Ain’t you ever getting tired of that tune, boy?” he asked.

“No, sir.”

Must have been two or three months into the new year when I walked to the little general store. I was on an errand for Mama, buying sugar and salt. I happened to glance outside as an old car pulled up. A skinny man got out. He was wearing a big straw hat, and when I saw what he was carrying under his arm, my heart got to beating so hard I thought it’d bust out my chest.

He was carrying a guitar along with a big black box.

“Who’s that?” I asked Artigo, the white man who ran the store.

“Lightnin’ Slim.”

“He play guitar?”

“Famous for it.”

“He gonna play here today?” I asked.

“He will if I give him a bottle of beer.”

“Give him two bottles.”

He walked in real slow, giving Artigo a big smile.

“That beer cold?” he asked.

Artigo said, “Got a kid here who loves him some guitar.”

“What’s in that black box?” I asked Lightnin’.

“Just a bunch of wires and tubes. Ain’t you never seen no amp?”

“No, sir. What it do?”

“Pushes electricity through the guitar. Makes it louder and stronger. Makes it scream until you can hear it over folk talking. You can hear it over anything. When this here electrical guitar starts to buzzing, folks gonna be flying in here like bees to honey.”

“You know ‘Boogie Chillen?’” I asked.

“Who don’t?”

“You gonna play it?”

“Sure will. You gonna sing along with me, boy?”

“I can’t sing.”

“Boy, everybody can sing, just like everybody can talk.”

As Lightnin’ set up I studied the whole situation. Saw him plug the amp thing in the wall. A tiny little light turned red. As he started fingering the guitar, I stood there right in front of him. With the first twang of his guitar a shock ran through my body. The blood inside my head, the blood pumping my heart, the blood running through my limbs—all that blood started into boiling. When Lightnin’ began singing, the raw sound of his voice and the jolt of his guitar set me back on my heels. My mouth dropped open so wide a family of flies could have flown in. At that moment I wasn’t noticing nothing but Lightnin’ Slim playing “Boogie Chillen” on his electrical guitar. He didn’t sound like John Lee Hooker—no one does—but he sounded good. While he played four or five other songs, I didn’t move a muscle. I focused my eyes on his fingers like a hound dog focused on a rabbit hole. He played for a half-hour and drank three beers. When he was through and I looked around me, I saw that little store was filled up with people. Don’t know where they all came from, but they was there.

Slim winked at me and said, “Out here in country, when I play this here electrical guitar, you can hear it three, four miles in the distance. Didn’t I tell you, boy? Folk come buzzin’ in like bees to honey.”

And then, like the Lone Ranger, he packed his guitar and amp, walked out to his car, and rode off into the sunset.

I knew about the Lone Ranger because every few weeks Artigo would let us black boys pile into the back of his pickup and he would drive us to a movie theater in a little town ten miles away. Fact is, me and Artigo’s son had been good friends as little boys. When we got older, though, we was told that whites and blacks couldn’t be buddies. He didn’t like that, and neither did I, but that’s how it was.

At the movies blacks had to sit upstairs while the whites went downstairs closer to the big screen. I loved seeing Gene Autry and Roy Rogers riding their horses and gunning down cattle rustlers. When Gene picked up his guitar and sang around the campfire, my eyes went right to his fingers. How did he make that nice, calming sound? Lightnin’ Slim and John Lee Hooker didn’t calm me down. They worked me up. I liked being worked up, but I also liked a guitar that was smooth and easy. Those cowboy songs were like lullabies. You had to love a lullaby. Because I wasn’t a bad lasso man myself, I got a big kick out of Lash LaRue and the other cowboys who knew how to work a rope. I liked all them lasso artists and gunslingers.

Back in our little country shack I kept close to the phonograph. After John Lee Hooker, we got some records by Lightnin’ Hopkins. There was “Lightnin’s Boogie” and “Moanin’ Blues.” Lightnin’ was a little softer than John Lee. He had a different kind of twang. When he played, his little notes seemed to be walking, like when I would walk down by the bayou. When he sang, he was telling me a story, almost like my daddy or uncle telling a story. I believed every word he said. And when those words was put to a rhythm and the rhythm got my foot to tapping and my heart to singing, all I could do was take that needle and put it back at the beginning of the record so I could hear the man do it again.

The general store where I saw Lightnin’ Slim had a jukebox that held all the records I liked so well. That’s where I first heard Muddy Waters singing “Rollin’ Stone.” Like John Lee and Lightnin’, he cracked open my soul to everything he said in his songs. I felt like I knew him.

“Where does Muddy Waters live?” I asked Artigo.

“Chicago. All these guys live up there in Chicago.”

“Chicago far away?”

“Real far.”

Artigo said the harmonica man called Little Walter lived in Chicago too. He pressed a button, and I watched as one of Walter’s records came on.

“Sounds like a woman crying, don’t it?” said Artigo.

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“Or a man begging,” he added.

I wasn’t sure what he meant.

“You ain’t ever begged for it, boy, have you?”

“I guess not,” I said.

“You will.”

I did.

It happened around the same time all this music started kicking in.

Now when girls fall in love for the first time, they’ll tell you that the music they happened to be hearing at that time is the prettiest in the world. When boys start into moving with the sex urge, music also goes along with that feeling. Girl or boy, that’s the music that’s gonna travel with you for the rest of your life. It gonna talk to you, walk with you, slip into bed with you, and wake you up in the morning. The seeds of that music are planted in fertile soil.

For me that music was the blues. Everyone knows that the blues can be both sad and happy. But the blues is also sexy. When the blues gets inside you, it stirs up your nature to get down and dirty.

In the country, especially in Louisiana where the ground is moist and muddy, we had to get down standing up. We had to learn to make love from a vertical position. That ain’t easy, but baby, where there’s a will, there’s a way. First time it happened I was probably fifteen. It could be awkward, but it also could be good, especially if you find a little bench where your honey could raise up her leg.

When it came to music, I was wild. When I’d learn Lightnin’ Slim was coming back through or a new Big Boy Crudup tune was loaded on Artigo’s jukebox, I’d run like the wind. When it to came to girls, though, I wasn’t wild. I was careful. That’s ’cause my grandma was careful to warn me that women are like plants in the jungle: many are beautiful and contain ingredients that can heal your body, but others, just as beautiful, contain poison.

“The wrong woman,” said Grandma, “can kill you. Or treat you in a way that will make you wanna kill yourself.”

As a young buck, I was following my nature—and my nature was strong—but I was also following Grandma’s advice. I was avoiding the crazy girls, the ones who’d tell everyone their business—and yours. I liked the quiet ones who seemed happy just to enjoy the boy-girl feeling that makes life worthwhile.

While I was still on the farm, though, it wasn’t sex that was most on my mind but baseball and music. And if it came down to choosing between the two, music was the winner. If me and the boys was hitting the tin can with Mama’s mop stick, for example, and we heard a radio playing Smokey Hogg’s “Good Morning Little Schoolgirl,” I’d shout out, “Rain delay!” and run to the radio. The rain delay lasted as long as the announcer kept playing blues. If the weather was clear, the radio could pick up a station from far-off Tennessee, where they might be playing Willie Mabon’s “I Don’t Know,” J. B. Lenoir’s “Korea Blues,” or Howlin’ Wolf’s “Moanin’ at Midnight.”

In the catalogues we got from Montgomery Ward and Sears Roebuck I studied the pages with musical instruments. I studied pictures of guitars like other boys studied pictures of half-naked ladies. I had to have me one. There wasn’t a chance in the world to get twenty dollars to send off for a new guitar, but one Christmas something happened that was nearly as good.

As usual, we had our dinner of fresh pork along with fresh greens, beans, and sweet potatoes. In the evening Coot showed up with his guitar. After drinking more than his fair share of wine, he broke into a sped-up version of Joe Liggins’s “Honeydripper.” That got everyone up to dancing. The weather had been right that winter, and it looked like the land would yield Daddy a decent penny.

“Henry,” said Daddy, calling Coot by his right name, “I been knowing your daddy Jim Smith for many a year. How old was you when he got you this here guitar?”

“I’d say twelve.”

“Just about the age of my boy Buddy.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And I’m guessing that this ain’t the only guitar you have.”

“You guessing right. Got me another at home. That’s my dry stick for a rainy day.”

“Well, looks like a little rain today, Coot, ’cause I’m prepared to buy this here guitar from you.”

When Daddy said those words, my heart started thumping hard against my chest.

“I couldn’t let you have it for less than five dollars, Mr. Guy.”

“Well, I got me four dollars just waiting to warm the inside of your pocket.”

“Four dollars and a little change might do it.”

“I can find some change,” said Daddy, searching through his pockets. “I can find a quarter.”

“That quarter,” said Coot, “gonna be lonely by itself. It needs another quarter go with it.”

“I got a dime to go with it. I got four dollars and thirty-five cent. You can take that money and buy you enough wine to last till the weather turns warm.”

Daddy handed over the money, and Coot handed me the guitar.

Life ain’t never been the same since.

“Before you go, Coot,” I said, “please show me how to play ‘Boogie Chillen.’”

“Simple,” said Coot. “You just lock in these here notes.”

He showed me the notes. At first my mind couldn’t talk to my fingers. I had to ask Coot to show me again. By then, though, he was deep into his wine and didn’t wanna bother.

“Please,” I begged. “I gotta learn ‘Boogie Chillen.’”

“This is the last time, boy.”

He showed me how to move my left hand up and down the neck of the guitar and which of the two strings to pluck with my right hand.

I had it. I played it. My sisters and brothers were happy to hear me play, but after the fourth or fifth time they said it was okay to stop. I didn’t stop, though, because Coot was good and drunk and in no condition to show me a third time how to finger the song. So like a fool in love with a lady he couldn’t leave alone, I couldn’t leave the song alone. I wouldn’t stop playing it. I played it for an hour, and then for two. I played it walking around the back of the house, walking out through the cornfields, walking down by the bayou and then up into the woods. I kept playing it because I was scared silly that if I stopped, I’d forget it. I had to play this song until it was as much a part of me as my liver or my beating heart. When the hour turned late and I couldn’t hold my eyes open any longer, I went to sleep with the guitar in my arms, afraid that when morning came, the song would be gone and I’d never be able to play the song again. So I hummed it in my head and prayed that I’d keep playing it in my dreams. When I woke up, I grabbed my guitar, wondering whether the notes of “Boogie Chillen” would still be there.

They were.