***The Roots Is The Toots- The Music That Got Them Through The Great Depression And World War II…

 

 

For Prentice John Markin and Delores Maude Markin (nee Riley) who lived through it all, survived it all, and never drew a blessed break…

 

…Yes, still he disturbed her sleep that week, made her a little cuckoo at work and around the house if you asked anyone within fifty feet of her. Was made more cuckoo when she talked to that  non- observant Irish Catholic tyrant father about his opinion (theoretically, of course) of southerners, American southerners, Protestants, Anglo-Saxon Protestants, the British kind, and Marines (she did not add the “love them and leave them” kind). His response was horrific. Yes, he had opinions of all three categories, none good, and not just none good. He sensed what she was getting at (her mother had vaguely posed the question to him earlier in the week) and said in no uncertain terms that he would not, his word, abide, an ignorant, uneducated (this before she even knew her Marine’s lack of formal education), whiskey-drinking (despite his rages her father  was a tee-totaller having survived a drunken besotted father), redneck southern Protestant (or northern Protestant for that matter) ne’er –do-well Marine, or any other military man from that part of the country in his house. End of conversation, forever.               

Still she thought of him, wondered whether he would be at the dance that week. Maybe he had shipped out, maybe he was off with some pretty young thing (although those fierce brown eyes when he spoke to her should have told her otherwise). In any case she was going to make her case, despite her father (or who knows maybe because of the old tyrant) and despite her qualms about his intentions. So come that Friday she prepared herself, put on her best party dress (which had first served as her graduation dress but with the war efforts eating up textiles at a prodigious rate serious dresses were not be had), make herself up special with a little rouge and some ruby red lipstick and, and, put on nylons, nylons, even more than special dresses not to be had then. Her best come hither soldier boy look.

And you know that he was there, the Sheik was there that night all in dress blues, as she walked in while Jimmy Mack and the Pack back again warmed up on Til The End Of Time. She did not know where it would all lead but when he asked her after they had danced a couple of numbers if maybe they could go down to Hullsville Beach and talk instead of staying for the dance she said yes…