True Grit

 

I originally saw the Coen Brothers' True Grit the week after Christmas ten years ago. I’d forgotten just how good it is. Everything about it is spot on - the cast, the direction, and the adaptation from the original novel. The last third of the movie really - and surprisingly - provoked such an emotional response in me tonight, from the scene where Rooster Cogburn faces down the Pepper Gang by himself, to Rooster riding Mattie Ross to safety on Little Blackie. That night ride is so beautifully shot, and when Rooster has to put the horse out of its misery, it brings tears to my eyes. Yes, I’m a big John Wayne fan, but the Coen Brothers/Jeff Bridges version is in a separate universe from the 1969 film. It’s one of my favorite movies.

A John Prine Winter

 

Man, I still miss John Prine. The guy was an amazing artist, and from all accounts, an amazing human being as well. I still haven't gotten over his death from COVID last April. Standing outside today in a snowstorm with a bunch of fifth graders brought memories of his music to mind. Few performers can evoke a time or a place for me the way John Prine could, and with a cold winter wind blowing through me and snow pellets lashing my face, I thought of Prine's songs "Storm Windows" and "Bruised Orange (Chain of Sorrow)". "Storm Windows" came out in 1980 and has been a part of my life for a long time. Here are the lyrics:

 

Storm Windows

By John Prine

 

I can hear the wheels of the automobiles so far away

Just moving along through the drifting snow

It's times like these when the temperatures freeze

I sit alone just looking at the world through a storm window

And down on the beach, the sandman sleeps

Time don't fly, it bounds and leaps

And a country band that plays for keeps

They play it so slow

Don't let your baby down

Don't let your baby down

Don't let your baby down

Well, the spirits were high till the well went dry

For so long, the raven at my window was only a crow

I bought the rights to the inside fights

And watched a man just beating his hand against a storm window

While miles away o'er hills and streams

A candle burns a witch's dreams

Silence is golden till it screams

Right through your bones

Don't let your baby down

Don't let your baby down

Don't let your baby down

Storm windows gee but I'm getting old

Storm window keep away the cold

 

Don't let your baby down

Don't let your baby down

Don't let your baby down, oh no

 

Here’s what John Prine said about “Storm Windows”:

“I grew up on a four-lane highway. Lots of trucks. Lots of traffic. I used to have these spells every so often as a child where like the ceiling of the room was in normal perspective, but the doorway would appear much farther away than it was. Coupled with this, all noises seemed muffled and distant, particularly the traffic moving on the wet or snow-covered pavement. I was really in another world. I finally worked up the courage to tell my mother and father about it, and Mom made Dad take me to the eye doctor. I love them both.”

        

Another reason I have John Prine on my mind today is I went to Randy’s Records after work, waited outside for fifteen minutes until it was my turn to go in, and bought a boxed set of John Prine’s albums he recorded for Asylum Records. Not only did I get Storm Windows with the set, it also contained Bruised Orange, which was released in 1978. Here’s John Prine's intro to "Bruised Orange (Chain Of Sorrow)", and his lyrics to the song:

 

“I used to work at this Episcopal Church when I was like thirteen years old. I was saving money for a guitar and I'd go in on weekends and dust the pews up because round about then, a lot of people started going to church, so the pews would get real dusty. And I'd wax the cross up, vacuum the carpet and clean up the cup they put the wine in. Religion kind of lost its magic for me. I was a roadie for god."

        

"In the wintertime they used to call me up early on Sunday morning to come get the snow out, off the walk in front of the church, because if one of the congregation fell and busted their ass they'd sue the church for all the money they'd given it all those years. And I used to have to go in pretty early, about five thirty, six o'clock on Sunday morning to take care of the snow. I always thought it was a real strange time of the day, particularly on a Sunday morning. You normally see people are out late from Saturday night, or else people really had a job on Sunday morning, like a newsboy or altar boy or a bunch of people like that."

“I seen, I was going over one Sunday morning and this kid who was going over to a Catholic church, this altar boy, he got hit by a train. He was just kind of screwing around, walking down the track, looking at his shoes and he got hit. He was a pretty bad mess. And there was about six or seven mothers around the scene of the accident. They didn't know where their sons were at the time. They didn't know who had gotten hit, and it took about fifteen, twenty minutes to identify him. I always remember, like, the look on one mother's, on the other mother's faces. Not the ones that, the others had a big sigh of relief. And they tried to comfort the other one but they were too relieved to be very comforting.”

 

And that’s the story behind this song …

 

Bruised Orange (Chain of Sorrow)

By John Prine

 

My heart's in the ice house, come hill or come valley

Like a long ago Sunday when I walked through the alley

On a cold winter's morning to a church house

Just to shovel some snow

 

I heard sirens on the train tracks, howl naked, gettin' nuder

"An altar boy's been hit by a local commuter"

Just from walking with his back turned

To the train that was coming so slow

 

You can gaze out the window, get mad and get madder

Throw your hands in the air, say, "What does it matter?"

But it don't do no good to get angry

So help me, I know

 

For a heart stained in anger grows weak and grows bitter

You become your own prisoner as you watch yourself sit there

Wrapped up in a trap of your very own

Chain of sorrow

 

I been brought down to zero, pulled out and put back there

I sat on a park bench, I kissed the girl with the black hair

And my head shouted down to my heart

"You better look out below!"

 

Hey, it ain't such a long drop, don't stammer, don't stutter

From the diamonds in the sidewalk to the dirt in the gutter

And you'll carry those bruises to remind you wherever you go

 

You can gaze out the window, get mad and get madder

Throw your hands in the air, say, "What does it matter?"

But it don't do no good to get angry

So help me, I know

 

For a heart stained in anger grows weak and grows bitter

You become your own prisoner as you watch yourself sit there

Wrapped up in a trap of your very own

Chain of sorrow

 

My heart's in the ice house, come hill or come valley

Like a long ago Sunday when I walked through the alley

On a cold winter's morning to a church house

Just to shovel some snow

 

I heard sirens on the train tracks, howl naked, gettin' nuder

"An altar boy's been hit by a local commuter"

Just from walking with his back turned

To the train that was coming so slow

You can gaze out the window, get mad and get madder

Throw your hands in the air, say, "What does it matter?"

But it don't do no good to get angry

So help me, I know

 

For a heart stained in anger grows weak and grows bitter

You become your own prisoner as you watch yourself sit there

Wrapped up in a trap of your very own

Chain of sorrow

Man, I still miss John Prine.