The Final Attraction
Sundays on the farm are strange days. Especially for a family making its living off milking dairy cows and raising calves. Up at 3:30 am, we would round up the cows in the dark and bring them to the holding pen while my father and grandpa would start up the vacuum pump and run a quick cleaning cycle through the system before we attached the milking machines to the first team of eight cows, arranged in a herringbone formation for easy access. At Tygerfontein, dairy farming was part of my upbringing for the first thirty years of my life. A dairy farm demands hard work, planning and attention to detail. Cows got milked twice a day, every day. Christmas, New Year, Spring , Summer, Winter and Fall. A sort of prison without doors if you will to my adolescent mind I could only understand the life lessons, wisdom and resilience it taught me in retrospect.
This particular Sunday I remember well. We got home after the morning milking session and cleaning the parlour, eating one of grandmas delicious breakfasts and putting the cows out to pasture. My mom was already getting ready for church and soon it would be my turn to jump in the tub and wash off the manure, milk, iodine teat dip and sweat. Mom ran, and still runs a tight ship on Sundays getting her rowdy husband and kids ready for Sunday service at the Dutch Reformed Church a good thirty minute drive away. Dad put on the kettle and told me to : “ put something on the radio “. That meant a choice of three or four vinyl records sitting next to an old Pioneer Hi-Fi system in the living room. Don Williams: Greatest Hits, Elvis Presley: The Greatest Hits, Roy Orbison and of course the self titled album by Kris Kristofferson. I cranked the volume and the magical, crackling sounds of Sunday Morning Coming Down filled our modest prefab house, my dad whistling in front of the mirror and mom harmonising with the chorus. One of my favourite memories, always will be.
I was already harbouring a deep and mysterious desire to be a musician, songwriter and poet and Kris’s songs broke that wide open. I realised that you didn’t have to be an exceptional singer or guitarist. You didn’t have to be good looking the way Elvis was. You needed to live life and write about it with empathy, honesty and intelligence. I realised that the job of a songwriter is to make the listener feel something. Kris was an exceptional and larger than life figure but he was also a real human. He was a golden gloves boxer, a helicopter pilot and Rhodes Scholar. He worked as a janitor at Columbia studios in Nashville watching his heroes record some of the greatest songs of all time. Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Guy Clark and many more. Kris once landed a helicopter on Johnny Cash’s lawn and handed him a tape of Sunday Morning Coming Down. He was working class, accessible to the man on the street yet exceptional, accomplished and later famous. Kris wrote the soundtrack to so many moments in my life. He’s got you from the cradle to the grave. I saw him in concert and it was a religious experience. He will always be the one of the greatest.
May he rest in peace, finally. To me he will always be that handsome, lonesome drifter carrying his old Gibson and tape recorder around. Sleeping in a motel or tour bus on the edge of some small town, rolling into a bar, concert hall or the Grand Ole Opry to break your heart to pieces with his worn out cowboy boots and pockets full of magnificent songs that you can guide your ship by.
“Well, here you are, the final attraction
Awaiting direction
From somewhere above
Your finest performance
Approaching perfection
I know what you're making
It's some kind of love
Somewhere in your lifetime
You were dared into feeling
So many emotions that tear you apart
But they loved you so badly
For sharin' their sorrow
So pick up that guitar
And go break a heart”
Final Attraction - Kris Kristofferson.
