Transition from Buble to yippie kai yay

The holidays are past us and the last thing I want is to hear another Christmas song. I had a lot of trips through Missouri running people to and from the airport and I either listen to sports radio or music.
I’m a Michael Buble fan, but if I hear “It’s Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas” again I’m gonna need a Metformin and a big glass of milk.
So if your Vikings are playing like they always do this time of year, you’d rather not hear the talking heads on sports radio, whom nowadays talk more about Michael Buble, trash your football season.
That leaves music.
Anyone who’s golfed with me knows two things. I suck and I play a lot of 80s pop and rock. But I’m suffering from a little burnout of Van Halen, Dokken, and the like. It may have something to do with me not having the hair for hairbands anymore.
So I’ve pivoted, to steal the verb of economic development officials, to something a bit more - Fort Madison.
I want to stipulate here that I do not hate country music. I DO NOT hate country music. My girls were both raised to Vince Gill. My wife used to say, again when I had hair, that I looked like Billy Dean.
But I’ve turned the satellite radio to channels 56-62 and have been listening to country music.
Everyone’s heard the joke that if you spin a country song backwards you get your house back, your wife back, and your dog back. As I start listening to these hillbilly lullabies and stories of back roads and beer cans and angry, angry women I"m wondering if I'm making the right transition.
They want to bash your car in and beat up your other girlfriend. They’d rather marry the dog than kiss the frog. I think that’s a Carrie Underwood ditty that I ran across.
If I look back at what I’ve accomplished and botched in my life, it could make an interesting country song. My ex literally lives in Texas.
I’ve lost two dogs and had to give one back because he wouldn’t stop jumping the fence and finding me at work. And I certainly have friends in low places.  I have no favor for strawberry wine, but if you ask me, grape is fine. See.
Don’t get me started on Boone’s Farm.
Kid Rock is kind of a mix of the two. I get the 80s rock vibe with the smoke-drenched rasp of the southern culture, and he’s known for his penchant for summers and beach parties – a soul that yearns for the summer and has little bandwidth for cold weather. I get those people. There’s something inviting about fun in the sun, but you better stay away from the carbs to pull it off at our age.
That should be the next country fun song that should come across the Georgia/Florida Line. Jimmy Buffett was okay with accepting age along with the tequila and lime, but I haven’t heard much about growing old in the country genre. Tim McGraw said we should live like we were dying. The irony there is that everyone is.
How about a song where an old fat guy gets in his Ford F150 on a 3-month sabbatical in search for beaches and swimming pools from November to February. Not the Blake Shelton "Some Beach, Somewhere" hit, but an anthem for us over-the-hillers, looking for our own place. He, or she, saved up all their money from 20 years in the factory or on the construction site. The spouse took the kids and the dog and the birds, so they don’t have any hang-ups about being gone. They worked overtime hating the boss and the damned gravel roads and dust ups on the way to the work site, so they have some disposable income. Why do cowboys always seem to have disposable income?
The chorus could be something like my girl (or boy, but the south has no time for pronoun identification – or driving lessons) bailed in the fall and I got no time for the snow. So I’m loading up my truck for someplace warm to go. The GPS is set - for a beach nearest me, so I can find a sun-kissed ocean to jump in and pee.
I don’t know.
Yeah. Let’s call it “I don’t know”.
What I do know is that I’m going to leave it on country music for a while and see if I can find something that I can sing to. Fat chance. But at least I’m broadening my horizons and I’ll probably eat more grits.
And file this under the category of day-changers, but I was walking into the Fort Madison and Central Lee varsity games in Donnellson Saturday and shared a moment with Bill and Janelle Cresswell. Bill told me when he read these columns, he could actually hear my voice reading it. I’m not sure there’s a bigger compliment in the world, and it's neat I get to read to you, but that’s Beside the Point.
Chuck Vandenberg is editor and co-owner of Pen City Current and can be reached at Charles.V@PenCityCurrent.com.