A Red Dirt Nighthawk
+ Keeping Scott Joplin Going
Vol. 156, June 10th, 2025 Published a day early online
Watch the YouTube Short here:
Or give it a listen in audio only.
Red Clay Dirt
“Well, I’m in a bit of a puzzle. Would you swing by?” I hung up the phone, eyeing the predicament. The world looked different at a thirty degree tilt. So much for new perspective.
The red clay dirt is magic. The apple trees love it, yearning skyward as they put down deep roots on the hillside. Bachelor buttons spring up in it, blue by the narrow driveway. Somebody should do something about that driveway, and make a place for cars to back into.
The neighbor was generous with extra fill dirt, and Bob got his machines out. We set to work, building a turnaround. I ran the excavator, herky jerky, a novice at the controls. “No catastrophe yet” he said, driving away after the last load. But red clay dirt is heavy. I took one more heaping scoop with the machine, turned sideways too far, and then...OH NO!
The fall was slow, terrible, down, down, until some guardian angel made the machine rest on its bucket, tilted halfway down the grade, the left track three feet off the ground. “Hmmm.” So I called Bob before I rolled the thing. He backed it off, and handed the controls back. All’s well that ends well, and there’s something soothing about the hum of a diesel–right side up.
Whew.
When I’m not collecting moonbeams and wistful poetry, sometimes I do something useful.
Carol’s Appalachian Word of the Week
Nairy (none): “Wasn’t nairy a one of those chickens laid any eggs today!”
Happy Birthday, Judy Garland (1922)
Her “Somewhere over the Rainbow” was nearly cut from the movie. Now it’s the song of the century. Happy birthday, Judy!
Elegance Outside the Window
The Tree Swallow is a native bird, easily spotted, often mistaken for a sparrow. Dig their insect-hunting acrobatics, and note the male’s iridescent green “tuxedo.”
Quotes for the Day
“But though an old man, I am but a young gardener.”
– Thomas Jefferson, in a letter
Song of the Week: “Wayfaring Stranger”
Eva Cassidy’s stellar take on this haunting melody keeps the old Appalachian song playing. It’s good pilgrim music.
Write to Us!
The Nighthawk is a new old-fashioned way to connect, published weekly. You’re invited to write back, or just enjoy reading. Let’s have some fun! It’s a social paper! Send stories, etc to: PO Box 783, Rustburg, VA 24588 or Joshurban@protonmail.com
Letters from Josh
(A weekly update from Josh Urban’s adventures on the farm and in the city. #236)
Appearing in the Altavista Journal, etc.: Keep ‘Em Shining
Howdy, folks, and welcome back to the show! One time I wound up in the quiet car on Amtrak. That didn’t last long. (I mean, who has a quiet car? Those people didn’t.) Another place unsuitable for a Josh: a lighthouse. Move over, distraught beagles with separation anxiety. My lonely cries, muffled by the consuming abyss of the endless surf, would still annoy the seagulls. “What’s this guy’s deal, Jonathan Livingston?”
The idea of a lighthouse keeper is nifty. An old pal has named his music project that. I dig it. It’s a theme that won’t let me alone. A car somewhere along the miles this week had a lighthouse license plate: Keep The Lights Shining. Indeed. Then they turned left, I went right, parked, and walked inside, thinking of the idea. What does it mean to be a keeper?
The day’s work was talking about history, and Scott Joplin’s ragtime tunes. The music sparkled, people tapped their toes. This classic American sound gets more festive and jaunty with each passing year. It’s the sound of the ice cream truck, popcorn, the fair, men on straw hats yelling “step right up!”, of our country emerging from a shadow into something better and brighter. Technically, it was also the sound of the seedy part of town, but thanks to Joplin taking it seriously, ragtime is now a cherished–and respectable–music.
Joplin died less than a week before we entered WWI in 1917, and with him, ragtime. For a while. But then the tinkling keys bounced back in the early ‘70’s. (If you haven’t seen The Sting with Paul Newman and Robert Redford, go watch it.) Today, thanks to ice cream trucks blaring “The Entertainer” with their lofi horns and an appreciative audience for the real stuff, Joplin’s music lives on.
That’s on us. Ragtime will survive as long as we spin the records and tap our toes. In that way, we’re lighthouse keepers.
Norton Juster wrote a bang up story back in ‘61 called The Phantom Tollbooth. It’s one of those kid-stories-for-grownups-too type of books. The main guy Milo visits the city of Reality. It went invisible because people stopped noticing, climbing stairs through the air and bustling down faded streets. (And this was written before smartphones.)
Do we keep things alive with our attention? I’d say yes. This is exciting. There’s a lot to pay attention to: old books and good books, your grandmother’s lemonade recipe, a real conversation with an old friend, the way the birds sing at dusk, Johnny Cash’s stories, thinking a problem over on a good walk and solving it, and how the distance turns the mountains blue.
The road yesterday was blinding, baking in the sun of the first real June day. I squinted, put on shades, and saw another lighthouse license plate. Then I went and talked about Scott Joplin some more, then about moonshine. Some people tried it, exhaling sharply, almost breathing fire. Then I drove home through fields of cut hay and a sun so big and orange it seemed like you could eat it. Keep ‘em shining.
–Josh
(Send real letters and lemonade recipes to P.O. Box 783, Rustburg, VA, 24588)