"Boot Scootin' Boogie" (from Let the White Dove Sing)
I've been working very off-and-on with this lyric essay chapbook project I'm titling "Let the White Dove Sing," after a line in the chorus of Martina McBride's "Independence Day." All of the lyric essays are titled after & engaging with 1990s country music songs and how they shaped my view, growing up in small town rural Missouri, of how the world works, for better or worse. The project is a kind of like a Devil Went Down to Georgia situation, only I'm at the crossroads with my pen trying to fight off Christianized nostalgia. It's a project rooted in love & a desire for growth, though I can't promise there won't be some boots jammed righteously into some asses along the way.
I'm kicking off the self-publication of the project here at Cammy's Well for paid subscribers, and I'm doing so with the oldest piece in the project, and the only one that was written before my divorce. "Boot Scootin' Boogie," after the Brooks & Dunn classic, was first published in The Texas Review vol. 40.3/40.4, which was their 2020 All-Essay Issue, edited by Katie Jean Shinkle. Thanks to Katie Jean and the rest of the Texas Review staff for that spectacular issue full of work by a lot of my favorite contemporary essayists.
"Boot Scootin' Boogie"
Camellia-Berry Grass
Out in the country, past the city limits sign, well there’s a Honky Tonk near the county line.
& before the banjos hum & before y’all start dancing, I want to dedicate something to the women who got me here.
This one’s for the women at the JoAnn’s craft store buying hot glue and rhinestones.
This one’s for the women wearing well-creased boots that her daddy wore when he was a teen.
This one’s for the women working one shift at the QuikTrip and one shift at the Wal-Mart next town over, putting food on the table her own damn self.
This one’s for the women swapping stories of survival at all the garage sales. This one’s for the women wearing out her cassette tapes of Patsy Cline, Martina McBride, Dolly Parton, Tina Turner, Jo Dee Messina, Tracy Chapman, Terri Clark, Melissa Etheridge, Patty Loveless, KD Lang, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Pam Tillis, Tricia Yearwood, Loretta Lynn.
This one’s for the women catching & gutting crappie without messing up their manicures. This one’s for the women frying up morels in one hand, feeding a baby in the other.
This one’s for the women who saw I, Tonya a couple years back and recognized half the women she knows. This one’s for the women in small towns held down by smaller men.
This one’s for the women dropping the kids off at her sister’s for the night. This one’s for the women driving out down state highways named after letters to get to the nearest pool joint.
This one’s for the women doing the Watermelon Crawl. The Boot Scootin’ Boogie. The Canadian Stomp. The Horseshoe Shuffle. The Tush Push. The Grapevine. The Copperhead Road. The Mustang Sally.
This one’s for the women who have to take their kids along to line dancing classes. This one’s for the women there with bruised arms, black eyes, and not from dancing neither. This one’s for the women stomping in time with Shania Twain’s “Any Man of Mine,” years of anger focused on the downward strike of a calfskin boot’s heel. Strength in numbers, organized self-assertion—This one’s for the women letting kids like me see how solidarity follows sisterhood as sure as one foot follows the other in a two-step.
Heel to toe, dosey-do, come on baby, let’s gooooo boot scootin’. Cadillac blackjack, baby meet me out back, we’re gonna’ boogie. I see outlaws, in-laws, crooks, and straights! All out making it shake, doing the boot scootin’ boogie.
This one’s for the women with big belt buckles. This one’s for the women who know what it’s like to fuck in a wheat field, or on the hood of a Mustang. This one’s for the women who buy that whole French Silk pie from Tippin’s at the end of a workweek. This one’s for the women who understand your irony about small pleasures but do not give a fuck what you think. This one’s for the women out getting a new purse, a new man, a fried tenderloin sandwich, a margarita at lunch, a birthday gift for her niece, a new job, a new vibrator, a new set of flannel sheets. This one’s for the women who once in a blue moon take her kids to the steakhouse & order without thinking about how to pay for it.
This one’s for you. And to you: I said, get down, turn around, go to town.