Bears Keep Showing Up In the Lives of Dead (and Sometimes Living) Country and Western Stars (January 2016)
by Zack Kouns
A bear sitting back in a rocking chair drinking a Coors Light and wearing an off white (more yellowish than white) beard while Webb Pierce sits on his lap and tells him that all he wants for Christmas is two extremely small bears dressed in jean bibbed overalls that can lick their own eyeballs and not even blink. That’s a tall order, Webb. Wonder if Santa Bear is up to the task?
Who in the daylights can tell me what a Bearcat is exactly? Because I’ve been having Ernest Tubb leave me 40 voicemails a day whispering in the lowest voice possible: “The Bearcat and the deep blue sea” and I don’t think the guy’s with us here in the land of the living anymore. That’s a tough one to swallow.
Atomic bear making a nucleus hat out of a honeycomb and 30 pounds of spoiled salmon for Roger Miller’s birthday. Listen Atomic Bear, he’s not with us anymore. I don’t like that anymore that you do. I love the songs of Roger Miller. Especially “My Bear Boy used to love me but she died” That song really hits home.
If I wake up one more time with an extraterrestrial version of Tom T Hall buzzing me in the middle of the night to tell me about “Bear Knowledge”, then you can count me out of Estes Park, wrangler.
Call me a hick, call me a Rick, just don’t let me beWeaver that I’ll never get to listen to Glen Campbell’s stirring audiobook “By The Time I Get To Bearville”
“Bear eyes crying rust logs in an Arkansas penitientary” is my favorite David Allan Woe top track. Sang so beautifully by Beary Jeff Walker. Put that one on your gramophone queue for a little stroll down Care Bear lane.
Every member of Alabama grows dreadlocks and spits in each other’s eels and opens up a restaurant called “Bear Culture” in Pigeon Forge, TN.
Hank Snow putting his mouth on the blade of a Polar Bear’s axe for his new job as no longer dead country blade swinger.
A giant bear licking the strings of a banjo till a grocery store opens up and starts selling Conway Twitty’s new book “The Bear In Me”
Patsy Cline married to a real life bear who is addicted to watching skin flicks on Cinemax late at night. That’s a tough one, Patsy. That’s my opinion.
Porter Waggoner splitting a tree with Liv Tyler’s fake blood. I know for a fact that BEARS HOLD UP LIQUOR STORES AND MAKE AWAY WITH NEW AMSTERDAM PINE TASTING GIN THAT THEY TAKE BACK TO THEIR CAVES AND GET TRASHED WITH THEIR BEAR WIVES AND DEAD AND LIVING COUNTRY AND WESTERN LEGENDS.
Bears buzzing through Texas TNT Tanya Tucker’s rootin’ tootin’ buzzard roost “reading Wallace Stevens’ “Harmonium” at MAX VOLUME IN ALL GRUNTS AND GROWLS
Finally, a bear after my own heart. A bear singing “He Stopped Loving Her Today” for bearaoke night at Bear Boy’s Bar and Billiards. George Jones in the front row at the top of a Grizzly Pyramid that is roughly 25 feet high having a good cry. Wow, talk about a big deal in Bearville.
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