LARRY DONN writes for Now Dig This
ROCKABILLY DAYS ON THE INTERNET

Many of my past and current 'Rockabilly Days' stories are availible on the internet at www.deltaboogie.com/rockabillydays through the efforts of Vivian Heyl, who, with husband "Hairy" Larry Heyl, presents the annual Blues-Fest here the first weekend of each September. For several years she has been inserting my columns into the "deltaboogie" site, and has recently established a special 'Rockabilly Days' section. If I understand it correctly, you can type in the above address and you will go directly to the "rockabillydays" part of the "deltaboogie" site, without having to risk encountering a picture of some ugly musician before you get to me.

Other information and such that you might find interesting can be found at www.deltaboogie.com/deltamusicians, including pictures of me suitable for printing, framing and placing in your shrine.

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SAVED There is a short story that you might find interesting, though I should have told it long before now. Several months ago, Rob Glazebrook of The Playboys, and lately of The Houserockers, and his talented wife, Manuela, came for a week's visit to our house. On a Tuesday night, they were sitting in with my band at a dance at the local senior citizens' centre... a "geezer gig", as one musician called it... and a good time was being had by all. Then I saw Joe Smith slide out of his chair and hit the floor. Someone waved us to stop playing, and we did. Rob and I walked over to Joe and I felt his pulse. It was verry weak and erratic, and he was breathing only in occasional short gasps. Then his heart stopped beating altogether and his face began to turn blue. Rob began pumping on his chest, and in a few seconds the blue went away. A minute or two later, the ambulance guys showed up and shocked him a few times to get his heart beating. He was hauled off to the hospital, only a couple of blocks away, and an hour later, someone called and said "they" didn't think he was going to live through the night. Baloney, I said. I've known Joe Smith for a long time, and he's tough. He'll make it, I told them. And he did. In about a month or so, he was back leaping about the dance floor, and has been there almost every night since.

Did Rob's heart massage save his life? Probably not. He was only unconscious about five minutes before the medics arrived, but it may have saved him some brain damage, as the brain begins to deteriorate after about 3 minutes without oxygen.

I asked Joe how much of that night he remembered. He said he didn't remember any of it. "I went to sleep and woke up in the hospital three weeks later", he said. I guess if you're going to have a heart attack, that's the way to do it.

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BLUES SINGERS There was once a black blues singer who called himself Blind Lemmon Jefferson. That set me to wondering why a perfermor would want to add a disability to his name. Then there is the "Lemon" part... could any parent actually name his son "Lemon"? Especially since no-good cars are called "lemons". Seems to me that couple set the kid up for a lifetime of emotional problems. Then there is the last name... the name of an American president, and I don't have a problem with that, but if this should catch on... it will be overdone, as humans tend to over-do everything. At some point in the future, blues fan might be enjoying music by Lame Apricot Washington, Tongue-Tied Eggplant Johnson or Soreback Cucumber Kennedy. They may even include unseen ailments as well as seen... Spastic-Colon Tomato Roosevelt or Constipated Beet Jackson. Then there are the mental disabilities... Ignorant Lime Van Buren or Retarded Onion Lincoln; and the social disabilities... Disadvantaged Grapefruit Grant, Poor Pomegranate Adams or Underprivilaged Orange Coolidge; and possibly attitudes... Asinine Kiwi Monroe, Angry Watermelon Truman or Cynical Potato Eisenhower.

This could even spread to multiple disabilities... Blind, Deaf, Lame and Retarted Kumquat Reagan or Stupid Crude and Foul-Mouthed Orange Nixon. Then, of course, there is Horny, Indescreet, Stupid - To - Have - A - Fling - With - A - Girl - Named - Monica - While - He's - Being - Investigated Kumquat Clinton, but that's another story.

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Okay, since I brought up the name, and since I wrote a couple of stories extrolling his merits, I must confess that I am extreamly disappointed with Bill Clinton. I was his biggest fan until he lied to us about his affair with the girl named Monica. I can't condone an American presidant lying to the people who supported him, and I think it was incredibly stupid to have done what he did while the subject of an investigation which included charges of extramarital affairs.

I don't have a problem with what he did, just that he had the poor judgement to do it while the opposition was investigating him, however expensive (something over 40 million dollars, most of which went into the pockets of the so called "Special Investigator" Kenneth Starr, who is less than human, in my opinion) the investigation might have been. In any case, I am no longer a Bill Clinton fan, and I will be quite happy when he is no longer president. I think we deserve better, and I never really liked his saxaphone playing, anyway.

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DOUBLE-NAUGHT? If time continues to pass with the increasing rapidity of the past few years, the year 2000 will be showing up next month. I'm sure you've heard about the expected problems with many computers that will not recognize the year 2000 and may go dotty with frustration. The race is on to re-program all the computers in the world before old "double-naught" shows up.

When it arrives, and in the years after, how will we refer to the year 2000? I've often said "...back in '59...", but it doesn't work with two zeros. Oh-oh? Naught-naught? Perhaps some hundred-plus years old person will tell us how they did it in the last double-naught year. And what about the single digit years? Shoud we say back in naught-three, oh-three, or just three? Let me know if you find out.

A related and perhaps interesting note: Most every school child knows that the years of history are divided into two parts called B.C. and A.D., but I'd bet there aren't many, at least in America, who know what the letters mean. In 532 A.D., a monk named Dionysius Exiguus (a wonderful name for your next child) took it upon himself to devise a system for dating world events. He made the division, using what he believed to be the birth year of Jesus Christ as the dividing point. B.C. means "before Christ" and A.D. means "anno Domini", which is Latin for "the year of our Lord".

Many great celebrations are being planned for New Year's Eve of '99, though the next millenium, or thousand years, doesn't actually begin until 2001. Of course, people will use any excuse to have a party, and this way, they can have two... one to celebrate the start of the last year of the second millennium, and another a year later to celebrate the start of the next thousand years.

We don't know if Dionysius Exiguus knew the exact year Jesus was born. Bible scholars cannot agree on a year, and guesses have been offered ranging from about four years before to four years after the date D.E. decided upon. With this in mind, one can see that the year the world celebrates as the 2000th since the birth of Jesus may not be the correct year at all, as it could be anywhere from '96 to '03. That certainly throws a kink into "end-of-the-world" to the year. If the "end of the world" was set to occur in the 2000th year, it may have allready happened. In which case, I'm not really writing this, and you're not really reading it. Of course, you may not be reading it anyway, but if you don't read it, you may never know what it says. Happy 2000, whenever it is.