I am a dropout.
I grew up pretty hard. I am an educational failure. I had few academic opportunities. As a result, I am a very slow reader, and an even wurse speler.
This is because, after my father died, my family hit rock bottom. My mother cleaned houses for a living, and worked in fast food. I, my ownself, dropped out of school and got my first job at age 14, hanging drywall.
Later, I would install tile and wood floors. I hung commercial roofing and seamless gutter. I had other ignoble occupations, too. I scooped ice cream. I was a telemarketer for exactly 13 hours.
In the evenings, for extra cash, I played music at local bars where overserved people two-stepped and showed their appreciation by lobbing bottles at the piano player.
I wasn’t particularly talented. I owned a guitar. I had a cheap piano my father bought from the classified section. I had long hair. Nobody wanted their daughter to date me.
But something about the communal glow of a beer joint changed me. I’ve had some powerfully good memories in dim rooms with clinking glassware.
When I was 16, I spent my birthday playing “Faded Love” in a joint on the Alabama state line. The bartender, Wanda, asked if I wanted a beer. Wanda was five foot, even, and had a voice like a pack of filtered menthols.
I told Wanda, without hesitation, yes, I did want a beer. So Wanda opened a PBR and poured three fingers of the golden nectar into a tumbler.
“Happy birthday,” she said. “You’ll have to wait until you’re 21 to get the rest.”
Whereupon she ceremoniously finished the bottle.
I also played piano in church, and at every Baptist function including fifth-Sunday sings, Decoration Day potlucks, and VBS. Most Baptists turned a blind eye to my nocturnal habits.
I attended community college as a 30-year-old man. I rectified my high-school misgivings. And I learned how to spel prety good.
And somehow, here I am.
I have an overbite, red hair, and a list of bad habits which causes fundamentalists to send me emails with subject lines that read: “Will I spend eternity without you, Sean?”
But there were a few people who have consistently believed in me. Namely, my wife. And my mother. My sister. My friends, who are too numerous to list.
And in a few days, the Grand Ole Opry will be releasing my first album. In a few days, I will be performing selections from this album on the Opry stage, on the air.
I’m not even sure what this means, since none of this feels real. But I’m telling you about all this because, I suppose, I still can’t believe it.
Even so, my first Opry album single “dropped” yesterday, on my father’s birthday. I don’t know what “dropped” means. But I know that this is something my old man would have loved.
My father was an avid Opry listener, and often swore that if he ever met Minnie Pearl in person, he would either propose marriage or, at the very least, a scandalous love affair.
I can also tell you that my first album was not recorded in a fancy studio with world-famous sound engineers named “Pootie Tang” running the mixing board. This album was recorded by me, in a rustic cabin, on Lake Martin, with cheap equipment.
There were quilts on the walls, to deaden the sound. The way all the professionals do it. My best good friend, Aaron Peters, played fiddle. We played antique music. There were empty Ovaltine bottles strewn around the cabin.
And a blue heron visited the lakeside dock every night after recording, to flap its wings and say hello.
Sometimes at night, after recording, I would lie in bed and wonder if prayers can travel backward in time. If they can, I continue to pray that a young 14-year-old, redheaded, construction-working musician will just hold on.
Because one day, in the year 2023, even though he is much older than most Opry walk-ons; even though he feels like a consummate failure; even though he can’t spell worth a shuck; that little boy will not be able to believe what I just wrote.
I know I can’t.
Life can be hard, tragic even. Even so, your Dad sprinkled some seeds. They lay dormant and uncared for as some years go by. Then some folks came along and convinced you your crop could be saved. You took the advice of the weed pullers, soil turners and the ones who added the fertilizer: they even helped with the watering. And low, with encouragement and discipline your garden is bearing fruit.
Not only that. Prayers of the past are coming to fruition.
An interesting concept about prayer working backwards, in the past. I like to think prayer of the past laying fallow, just waiting on Gods perfect timing. Because sometimes prayer seems dormant, unproductive. But the soil must be prepared. We must endure tests along the way and wait for the right people to enter our story.
I have no doubt you must have been prayed for mightily as a young child. Your grandparents, mother, father and sister, church family and eventually your wife. Your music drops on your Dad’s birthday. Now there’s a God wink!
Your testimony and prayer serve a purpose for children and adults today that have endured the unimaginable. ‘Hang on because I’m praying for you. God is always up to something, don’t lose faith.’
With God and good people the seemingly impossible can happen. Amen
Sean, you are a SUCCESS. You have always been. It is only in your eyes that you have failed. To make it to the Opry is a success, not many do. You are a wonderful "sketcher". You play two musical instruments, not many do. You have many followers that look forward to your writings daily. Get over that failure thing Sean. You never were.