A Fond Remembrance...

I was stationed in Germany for a time whilst serving in His Majesty's Not-so-secret Service.  

I worked in doing stuff I can't talk about a little town just outside of Heidelberg, one of the very prettiest cities on Earth.  I was lucky enough to make friends with other soldiers who held a recurring Wednesday evening poker game in the Mannheim Top Hat Club.  That's a really big military night club and bar for enlisted soldiers just outside Frankfurt.  We'd get together around 9:00 and sometimes play all night.  Lemme' tell you there's nothing quite like a good poker game with a bunch of crusty lifers to take your mind off a war...

The Top Hat would hire a changing cadre of bands and entertainers to keep the troops happy.  But some were so good, so very well received by the guys that they wound up being pretty much a permanent fixture.  A thing like that happened in Mannheim and I grew to know one such guy...

He was Black.  And he was a country singer.  Ummmm, what?  Those two don't go together.  Or at least they didn't back in the 1960's.  It was just him, and his trusty guitar, singing ballad after ballad, five nights a week.  And one of those nights was Wednesday.  And I found myself getting to the Club early so I could sit and listen to this guy play and sing and drink while I knocked back one of those great German beers.  Because I dedicated some of my time to him, he became friendly towards me.  Friendly enough that he'd usually take a break when I arrived so we could catch each other up on the goings-on in our lives.  He was a bit older than me, so I found myself looking up to this guy.  And that wasn't strange at all; there was no racism in the Army, nor in the other branches, I'm guessing.  There's nothing quite like a war and people getting shot and dying to both unite people around a common cause and forswear simple crap like skin color.

There are no Blacks or Reds or Yelllows or Browns or Whites in a fox hole.  Just so you know...

Anyway, after about a year of this he told me he was going to have to move on.  He confided in me that he was endeavoring to become a country music recording star, and his producer, a guy named Pop Phillips,* had sent him to Germany to hide out while his records were being introduced.  And he told me that they had caught on and that Pop felt he could now come home and enjoy the fruits of his talents without people first considering his "Black-ness."  He told me he was off back across the Big Pond, and wished me well.  We promised to stay in touch.  We always said that back then.  To keep in touch, that is.  But never meant it...

You should know my old friend Charley Pride died yesterday.  He was 87, I think, and fell victim to the Chinese Killer Wuhan Coronavirus (sorry...I will not use that OTHER term).  His records did indeed "hit the charts" and he became one of the greatest country recording artists of all time.  He's also been voted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.  I'm sorry I didn't keep my promise to follow up with Charley and reestablish our friendship.  I'm sure he'd have been glad to see me.  

And I sure would have been glad to have seen him...