From San Quentin to the Kennedy Center


The reformation of country singer Merle Haggard will be complete when he travels to the White House this December to receive the annual Kennedy Center honors.
It will have been a long journey and my favourite Merle Haggard yarn is how one night after he had established himself as a singer he went up to Johnny Cash after a concert and told him, “I certainly enjoyed your show at San Quentin.”
Cash said “Merle, I don’t remember you bein’ in that show.”
Merle Haggard said, “Johnny, I wasn’t in that show, I was in the audience.”
And don’t you dare tell me that Wikipedia has got it wrong. I’m not going to let a little thing like truth get in the way of a good story. Just settle back, sing along and decide for yourself whether his most famous political statement in song was “actually written as an abjectly humorous character portrait.”
9-09-2010 okiefrommuskogee
We don’t smoke marijuana in Muskogee;
We don’t take our trips on LSD
We don’t burn our draft cards down on Main Street;
We like livin’ right, and bein’ free.
I’m proud to be an Okie from Muskogee,
A place where even squares can have a ball
We still wave Old Glory down at the courthouse,
And white lightnin’s still the biggest thrill of all
We don’t make a party out of lovin’;
We like holdin’ hands and pitchin’ woo;
We don’t let our hair grow long and shaggy,
Like the hippies out in San Francisco do.
And I’m proud to be an Okie from Muskogee,
A place where even squares can have a ball.
We still wave Old Glory down at the courthouse,
And white lightnin’s still the biggest thrill of all.
Leather boots are still in style for manly footwear;
Beads and Roman sandals won’t be seen.
Football’s still the roughest thing on campus,
And the kids here still respect the college dean.
We still wave Old Glory down at the courthouse,
In Muskogee, Oklahoma, USA.

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