If you aren’t familiar with the song “Choctaw Bingo,” this isn’t going to make much sense at all, so here’s the link to the song on Spotify. Also, I’m realizing that my familiarity with the I-35 and I-44 corridors probably makes a lot of things easier for me to picture, so if you really want the experience here, go drive back and forth between Chicago and Austin a half-dozen times.
Wikipedia’s great because it states almost everything in the exact same tone. From Hitler’s death to the Heidi Game (a personal favorite of my brother’s), everything is written with the same voice of explanatory seriousness, with reference links every seventh word or so—in case you need to know what a pistol is.
So, then, “Choctaw Bingo,” by James McMurtry. The best lines, from Wikipedia’s account of the ballad:
***
The narrator starts the song by asking the other person to pack up their children and sedate them with vodka (or Vicodin, in one version) and, later, Benadryl. Apparently, this is to keep them quiet on their trip to a family reunion taking place at a ranch belonging to the narrator’s Uncle Slayton.
…
The more we learn about Slayton, the more we are led to conclude that he is a gruff and shady character, adept at a variety of money-making activities that range from merely unethical to totally illegal. It is explicitly stated that Slayton cooks crystal meth and makes moonshine.
…
Roscoe has nothing better to do than to just “Come on Down” so he sets off in a semi-trailer truck from the McDonald’s on Will Rogers Turnpike headed for Dallas, TX. He ends up in an accident with another driver who runs a stop light in Muskogee. It is not clear whether Roscoe was injured in the accident nor whether he will attend the reunion.
…
Husband and wife couple whose status in the family is unknown. Bob coaches a football team at a small town near Lake Texoma that won the 2A state championship the last two years, but will not repeat this year. They purchase a cache of guns and ammunition in Tushka, Oklahoma on the way to Slayton’s including an SKS rifle, military surplus ammunition available due to the changing political alignment of Eastern Europe, a Desert Eagle and some military surplus tracer bullets for Slayton’s BAR.
…
She’s about the narrator’s age and lives off of Interstate 44 somewhere in Missouri near a billboard advertising DNA testing for paternity. The narrator explains that she’d spent six months at Red River Rehab, because of a “pain pill problem” (possibly Oxycontin), but she’s recovered and does cocaine now.
…
They live in Baxter Springs, Kansas which is described as “one hell-raisin’town”. The Loners MC run a biker bar, next to a lingerie store with big neon lips burning in the window. The biker bar was actually a motorcycle parts store, Bikers Dream, which closed in 2001 and now houses Keystone Academy, while the lingerie shop, Romantic Delights, moved to Joplin, Missouri. Bikers Dream was owned by Tim (Pony) Cline and the lingerie shop by his wife.
The narrator describes, in some detail, that he is incestuously attracted to his cousins, who wear hardly any clothes, which arouse him. (James McMurtry calls this the “Good Part”, and at live performances, encourages audiences to dance to it.)
The narrator references a bodark fence post in this section, which is one of the hardest woods in North America. The Bodark (Bois d’arc, or Osage Orange) tree was used for fence posts for many years in some parts of the country due to its exceptionally hard, long lasting wood.
…
At live performances there is a section at the front of the stage where people dance. When he plays this song the section is nearly packed and everyone is hopping around, hooting and hollering.[citation needed]
…
In 2009, American writer Ron Rosenbaum, writing for Slate, nominated Choctaw Bingo as a new national anthem for the United States. Rosenbaum argues that the themes of the song are a perfect and prophetic metaphor for life in a post-financial crash America.
***
The Slate thing at the end always cracks me up. Of course it was Slate.
My favorite version is from Beer for My Horses soundtrack because it starts with ” we’ll start this next set with a song about the North Texas- Southern Oklahoma crystal methamphetamine industry”
Yes!! What a song.