The first few times listening to Leroy Brown with earbuds was startling because of sporadic hooting and hollering in the background. I'd crane my head around while trying not to trip, looking for the person who is yelling. Car Wash Blues reminds me of a couple people from high school who got high SAT scores, then considering themselves to be brilliant geniuses, the rest of their life has been a Groundhog Days series of smoking weed and watching TV. Note to the self diagnosed geniuses, having a strong knowledge base in Netflix documentaries does not equate to being well informed.
When I listen to Operator I get sentimental, which can give me the chills. I worry the combo, chills in the summer heat while jogging, could give me a seizure, so I think of something sad and gross to squash any emotion conjured up from the song.
On NPR James Taylor was being interviewed about his new album. He acknowledged "Steamroller Blues" is about white blues singers in New York acting like they are black. I worried Taylor was lampooning Croce. Croce goes a bit Rachel Dolezal when he sings You Don't Mess Around With Jim. The chorus is fine, but when Jim sings about his custom made suit I get uncomfortable, and wonder if the song is inadvertently racist.
The other day I went to the pool with my friend, and she said, "You have gotten so tan."
Its true, the outdoors lifestyle of mommy hood, makes it so I turn into a different race during the summer. My older sister is the same, and spent middle school as a tanned white girl chola. During these times, we can get away with checking ethnicity boxes that don't belong to us.
It's because of the Cherokee blood. My mom's great grandma was a Cherokee on the Trail of Tears. We were awarded a certificate confirming this tragedy. My mom said they used to call her Grandma Hatchet, which is obviously racist. The name was meant to be funny in the Tina Fey-Larry David kind of racist humor, maybe it ended up more Adam Sandler racist but that was a different time.
Tahoe has a lot of this ethnic cocktail, white with a dash of Native American. We tan easily and have almond shape eyes. Maybe its the call of the outdoors, being close to nature, or perhaps its the casinos, booze and free love thinking, that draws this population to Tahoe.
My little sister, who inherited the Norwegian appearance, was holding her baby when a friend approached her and said, "Wow, your daughter is so tan."
The friend who was taken aback by my niece's skin color was with her own baby, who appeared to be see through. His veins were visible, and his forehead could easily pass as a road map, but it would have been rude to point that out. I didn't want to tell her she sounded like an asshead because she is a known anorexic, and although her problems are legit, the world will chew up and spit out any person who is willing to starve them self to death because of self loathing, and I won't promote the upheaval.
Even if Jim Croce was Steamrolling, he did it out of admiration. He is a blues singer, so he wanted to do it in the best way he thought. They say imitation is the greatest form of flattery. Rachel Dolezal pretended to be black and worked as an activist for Blacks so I think her flattery was also with good intentions.
Again with the NPR, but I heard a professor from Tufts say that the problem with Rachel was checking the black ethnicity box on her application. She is a great person and helping fight the cause but now she created a Great White Hype moment where black achievements are being overlooked because of this white person's scandal. Then I thought, well that gives her checking the Black box meaning because if her parents hadn't outed her, then her activism would not have been credited to White Hype.
Regardless, of how far Rachel went back to feel the One-drop rule worked in her favor, she got caught. It would have been the perfect crime, if it weren't for her parents, who seem a bit mean.
My favorite Croce song is One Less Footsteps, and I picture Rachel playing this song to her parents' voicemail, while shouting, "You will never see your grandchildren again!"
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