The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #309

#309: "Down in Mississippi" (2007) - Mavis Staples





Last night, my mother, father, wife, and I drove across town to the Silver Star Hotel, Resort, & Casino here in Philadelphia, Mississippi to catch the baby girl (she's only sixty nine) of the late, great Pop Staples. I'll talk about the concert (with the Blind Boys of Alabama) sometime this weekend, but for now I'll focus instead on the initial single of Ms. Staples' latest album, 2007's We'll Never Turn Back--not only the best pop album released last year, but quite possibly the best of the decade.

"Down in Mississippi" was written and first recorded by J.B. Lenoir in 1966. Like Staples, Lenoir was a Mississippian by birth (1929 for Lenoir). He moved to Chicago when he was twenty, and soon began playing the blues. He had a few small hits on the R&B chart throughout the latter half of the next decade, but nowhere near enough to make ends meet, so he had to take other jobs just to get by. In the early sixties, Lenoir met the great blues songwriter Willie Dixon. Dixon helped Lenoir record his next two albums, and both diverged greatly from what Lenoir--and most other bluesmen of the time--had previously recorded, both in style and in content. Lenoir's lyrics now contained harsh social commentary, very daring (and literally dangerous) for the time, especially considering they were sung by a black Southern native (whose wife still lived there). "Down in Mississippi," first recorded in 1966, exemplifies the changes in Lenoir's blues, as the music contains some African instrumentation, and the lyrics reflect the (then) tumultuous, violent, and murderous acts that came to a head in 1964 in Neshoba County.

Mavis Staples was singing back then with her family as the youngest member of the Staple Singers, a highly influential group, further integrating gospel into popular r&b music (where Ray Charles, James Brown, & Aretha Franklin paved the way for the later success of the Staple Singers by letting gospel music influence their music and singing, the Staple Singers let gospel music influence their lyrics as well).

Mavis' father--and Staple Singers founder and guitarist--Pop Staples met Dr. King (both already fans of one another) in 1962, and Staples decided to join the Freedom Movement, playing at places where King would speak, singing at rallies and at churches, and even joining the march from Selma to Birmingham. Staples and his daughters Cleotha, Yvonne, and Mavis (and later, for a time, his son Pervis) knew King well, and they knew King's fear of speaking in Mississippi, specifically in Neshoba County, the one place King said he ever truly feared for his life.

Mavis Staples grew up in Mississippi, and in her rendition of Lenoir's song, she relates an incident in which she, as a child, integrated a washeteria in Forest (MS). She tells the story about midsong, and she doesn't just relate the story; she witnesses. She doesn't preach, not exactly, not traditionally, but she uses the style of many an African-American Southern Baptist preacher. Her voice--not quite the full-throated powerhouse it once was, back thirty years ago when the only female singers that rivaled her talent were Aretha Franklin and Darlene Love--has aged and serrated somewhat, giving her an authorotative rasp (especially prevalent when she reaches her upper register), her voice now more blues than soul or gospel, giving the lyric a timeless quality. Mavis Staples' glory in this song can also be found in her numerous chuckles, at once sounding like someone laughing at how ridiculous life used to be, and also sounding like someone laughing because those terrible times have been conquered--it's a proud laugh. It's triumphant. It's righteous. It's liberating because she's liberated. It's freeing because she's free.

She's not overjoyed, though, as her band--and Ry Cooder's production, heavy on the reverb--keeps her earthbound, a creepy reminder of the way things used to be. The record's tone isn't tense or scabrous as Lenoir's original, but in its own ways, it's just as timely and imporant. The record's interplay of victorious voice and triuphant lyrical interlude against the rural instrumentation and archaic reverb make this record spectacular, a haunting hallelujah. Mavis Staples has returned triumphant back down to Mississippi, all the "For Colored Only" signs gone, most of the "For Colored Only" feelings gone, too...but not forgotten.

The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #310

#310: "Bag Lady" (2000) - Erykah Badu

Originally, I listed Erykah Badu's "Bag Lady" about twenty-or-so spots lower than its current rank. It's not because of the jazzy, prime Prince-like music, simultaneously loose (the feel) and tight (the band), containing the fantastic "pack light" hook; nor was it because of the singer, as I've admired Badu's hip-hop Billie Holliday, neo-jazz phrasing since both she and her turban debuted a decade ago. In fact, the tune and singing and arrangement and production are all top notch pop music, as good a neo-soul record as anyone's made in the past twenty years. No, the reason I ranked the record so low--and cut it from my list a time or two--was because I hated the lyrics.

I mean, I know Badu focuses many of her rhymes on topics of cultural and socio-political concern, but is she really so cruel and facile--however practical--a therapist as to tell a homeless woman to quit carrying around her shopping sacks of essentials just so she'll know love? Is she so insensitive an artist that she'll transfer her own problems ("One day/He gon' say/You crowdin' my space") onto those of her subject? Apparently so. Apparently, Badu thought that since her song was so sensational, that she could heap upon it the most vile of conceits.

Surely not, though. Badu's an artist, and she's sensitive about her, uh, stuff (just call and ask Tyrone). I know! Badu's using Swifitian satire! She's adopting the persona of a callous (possibly W.A.S.P.) liberal or conservative do-gooder, one who's so concerned about the facade that the all-important interior is swept aside. Badu meant this song to be a metaphor, a criticism of Giulianian urban gentrification. "Bag Lady" is Badu's "A Modest Proposal."

Upon unearthing the deeper meaning of the song, I immediately increased its rank, and I rose it up the charts with a bullet, from the 330 region to somewhere in the Top 20...and rising! Even though it would be more than a year before I would post the entry, I prepared it anyway while the song and ideas therein were fresh in my mind. I found the Badu picture (see above), and I pasted it in. I went to YouTube to find the video (for I don't yet know how to embed streaming audio) and then listened to a bit of it to make sure the audio quality was sound. I started to watch it, and, then...

...wow! Was I ever wrong. Completely wrong on both of my assessments of the song. Utterly wrong. How I missed so obvious a metaphor, I have no idea. Sometimes, I'm such the idiot.

The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #311

#311: "Safety Joe" (2005) - John Prine

When I attended the Meridian branch of Mississippi State University, I stayed with my cousin Terry and his family. Most of the time I lived there, Terry wasn't around at night because he was either away on business meetings or working the late shift; however, most nights when he was home, he played his guitar and sang, thereby introducing me to John Prine.

Prine released his first album in 1971, in the early midst of the singer-songwriter era in American popular music. James Taylor, Carole King, John Denver, Janis Ian, Don McLean, and B.J. Thomas all had hit records in '70/'71. Maybe his record company then (Atlantic) hoped that putting a serene, soft-focus picture of Prine with a rustic setting on the cover of his debut album

would help draw in the audience that were buying singer-songwriter records in droves. This album (like most of Prine's others) succeeded--with the critics. Not so much with the masses, where it only reached #154 on the Billboard Album chart. Maybe the album flopped with the singer-songwriter audience because the songs were too trenchant and witty and not self-centered and whiny enough, maybe the album flopped with the pop audience because the production was too country, maybe it flopped with the country audience because a song like "Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore" was never going play back in Muhlenberg county, maybe it flopped with the folk crowd because "Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore" was the only overtly political song on the record, and maybe it flopped with the hippies because they were too stoned to pick up on the telling details in the opening track "Illegal Smile." Maybe, though, it didn't flop completely; maybe a small segment of each of the aforementioned audience (okay, maybe not the pop audience) types bought it and got it, because Prine's next album rose up the charts, all the way to #148; the next to #135; and his fourth--with an all new funk/rock production (eww) and a more cynical viewpoint--took him to #66--and then Atlantic dropped him. Go figure.

He switched to Asylum, where his records all reached somewhere between #150 and #100 on the charts, the production changed album-to-album, and the song quality dipped (though each album sports a couple of gems). In '84, Prine started his own independent label (Oh Boy! records), and his records improved in quality (though not in sales, where they dropped immediately and deeply). In '91, Prine released The Missing Years (my favorite album of his) and won his first Grammy. With that recognition, his sales spiked, selling over 250,000 copies. He released another album in '95--Lost Dogs & Mixed Blessings--and received another Grammy nomination (though he didn't win). Three years later, just as he was beginning recording sessions for his album of duets with his favorite female singers, Prine was diagnosed with cancer-- squamous cell carcinoma. He underwent surgery on his neck and endured chemotherapy (and, as of right now, is nine years cancer-free). He went back to the studio in '99 to record the album of duets (In Spite of Ourselves, a fantastic album if you like old country songs, and still a pretty good one if you don't) to discover that his voice had changed: it was now much more ragged, and it had dropped an entire octave.

Prine's different vocals are noticeable on In Spite of Ourselves, but the difference appears more prominently in Fair and Square, which Prine released in 2005, his first release of new songs in ten years. The alteration in timbre make Prine sound much older, but Prine has used this grandfatherly quality to his advantage. He's slowed down the tempo in his songs, and he's slowed his cadence as well. These musical changes coupled with Prine's vocal changes give the songs a more reflective quality, allowing the songs to ruminate, resulting in Prine coming across--in the more contemplative songs--like a wise sage, like an old bluesman; but one who's kept his sense of humor intact.

Nowhere is this lackadaisical wit more evident than in "Safety Joe." Another one of his sad-sack narratives, Prine here warns the titular character who "wears a seat-belt around his heart" against the perils of moderation, and he does so with the utmost gregariousness, allowing everyone else in the studio to sing along on the refrain. Prine's never sounded more amiable, chuckling at his own puns, using self-depricating humor ("where's that mandolin?" "it's the chorus"), and this complete lack of pomposity is refreshing, life-imbuing. It's hard not to grin while listening, and impossible while singing along. It's the best Prine's sounded in years, lower octave or not.

Madden 09

Today marks the first important event in the onset of football season. Moreso than the draft, training camp, pre-season games, water-cooler prognostication, or--in some abodes--opening day, the annual release of EA's Madden NFL Football video game signals official football fervor across the nation. After work today, the missus and I went to Wal-Mart, and I bought the new game--Madden '09, with Brett Farve on the cover (in his Green Bay jersey, no less, as EA was hoping to break the "Madden Curse" by displaying a retired player, but then, about a month ago...). We picked up the kids from day-care and came home. Just as the younguns began eating their snacks and watching Danny Phantom, I put the new game in the console and kicked the kids, crying and screamin, from the living room. This was my time. I've been waiting for it since February, and it's almost as good as Christmas.

The Madden football franchise has been around for twenty years now, and non-contact football games even longer. I've been playing electronic football games since I was six, and I thought that today, thirty-one years later, would be a good time to briefly review the history of the electronic football game through images and video. As far as the written history, the fine folks at Gamestop detail the games' evolution far better and more thorough than I could, and they do it here:The History of Football Games.

For brevity's sake, I'll just outline a chronology. Make sure and play all the videos. Once upon a time, I sure did.

1947 - Electric Football (Tudor Games)


1977 - Mattel Handheld


1980 -Coleco Handheld


1978 - Atari 2600 Football


1983 - Intellivision Football


1987 - John Elway Quarterback


1990 - Play Action Football (NES)


1991 - Tecmo Super Bowl - Bo Jackson...up the middle.


1995 - Madden for Super NES


1998 - Madden for Playstation


2001 - Madden for Playstation 2


Ahh...brings back some fond memories of beating the stuffing out of Ronnie Rouse, John King, and whoever else happened to drop by the pad during football season. Speaking of the pad, I shall return there now, and begin a new franchise. I think the Chiefs will do nicely. They've got a strong base of youthful players, a $40 million cap, and they need a coach who can guide them in the right direction. It's time to burn the midnight oil.

The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #312

#312: "Mother Mary" (2008) - Foxboro Hottubs
At first listen, what immediately pops right out of "Mother Mary" is the familiarity of the sound. Haven't I heard this before? Yeah, I have. It's a knockoff (or an homage, depending on one's viewpoint) of The Stroke's "Last Night." It's derivative. The band's not too terribly original; we've heard this stuff before. Why's the song here then?

For one, the musicians are tight, and the harmonies are, too, as if the band's been playing together for a decade or more. The Foxboro Hottubs they are, and they're brand spanking new, as this single comes from their debut album. Their expert record-making surprises from a group so young.

The lyrics, well, they're deep, man, full of Freudian slips and Catholic imagery. It's emo, too, as the singer proposes that he and his l'amour "hang in love from the gallows." That's so sweet, so romantic, so wonderfully naive.

The music and the melody--straight out of South Carolina. South Carolina? Sure. This is beach music. Myrtle Beach music. Frankie and Annette danced to this music. You saw that movie, didn't you? The one where they both wore black eyeliner? It was the ginchiest.

These rad rock-and-rollers may be green, but the day will soon come where their experience will pay off, and they'll start making exciting original records; heck, they may even have it in 'em to one day create a cliched concept album about how the media and government are corrupting America. They're not there yet; they've got work to do, and till then they'll walk alone...or with the help of a great Strokes song.

The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #313

#313: "Laser Life" (2006) - The Blood Brothers



This past Friday night, my family and I were watching the opening ceremonies* of the Olympics. During one of the brief commercial breaks, I asked Nicholas to try a Fig Newton (as I bought them because Nicholas told me he didn't believe in figs, nor in cookies made from them). He did, and his face turned sour. I stifled back a laugh and asked him how he liked it; "Not so much," he said. I told him that figs are an acquired taste, and then I had to explain what that term meant.

A few seconds later, the commercials ended, and the opening ceremonies resumed. The Parade of Nations, which had started about thirty minutes earlier, continued. Soon, Hungary was introduced, and Nicholas said they must all be hungry there. Penny laughed, and I groaned. Nicholas continued, saying the reason they must all be hungry is because all they have to eat are Fig Newtons. I laughed at that one, and Penny said, "Look!"

I did, and we both had a good laugh. Bob Costas did, too, though he held it in. After noting the entrance of the Hungarian Olympians, he began to note these outfits, and he paused for a few seconds, then said, "Well..." and another pregnant pause, "everyone has different ideas about taste." Penny and I about split a gut, and then Nicholas asked why we were laughing. We tried to tell him, but I don't think he understood that to someone, these clothes looked pretty, that sometimes it just boils down to variant perception; one man's garish, Jackson Pollacked, flower-printed, polyestered, pant-suited nightmare is another man's representational idea of beauty and national pride. Or something like that.

There's no accounting for taste, yeah, but sometimes one can acquire an appreciation for art outside the realm of one's ususal sensibilities. Case in point, The Blood Brothers' "Laser Life." First time I heard it a couple of years ago, the Wurlitzer electric piano (the kind brother Richard played on The Carpenters' "Top of the World") started playing that carnival-like, bouncy, funk-lite groove, and then the drummer came in, syncopating on the toms, and I started bobbing along. Cool. The lead singer Jordan Billie's high-pitched squeal grated, but the music rocked and rolled and bubbled, and I thought that as long as the music was more prominant than the vocals, that I could continue listening and liking the song. Then the chorus arrived. And I turned it off a second later.

Who in the world told this man-child he could sing? Why is he screaming like that anyway? This wasn't death metal. This guy sounded like the worst parts of Iggy Pop, Perry Ferrell, and Johnny Rotten all mixed together. His voice was like Chipmunk Metallica. How does band have fans? Who can tolerate this? Why is this band getting critical praise? (Okay, I could answer that one). I thought it was the worst thing I'd ever heard, so I had to hear it again. I had to at least make it to the end of the song. I was a man. I could do this.

I started the song over, and I started to see the charm in Billie's delivery (if not his voice), and the music remained funky. I make it through the chorus...okay, that was catchy. I don't know what in the heck he's screaming, but it's catchy, and then the post-chorus, where Billie screams something that's immediately off-set by the bass vamping up and down the scales--that's pretty tight. The verse again, the chorus again, and then....whoah! The song comes to a dead stop, and the lead guitarist starts double-picking on a string for a full eight counts. Okay. This is some serious stuff, here. Innovative. Not quite sure I've heard a moment quite like that before. Not in a rock and roll pop song.

The song starts back, surely transitioning back to the chorus, but no; the song takes a left turn, introducing a short piece that I didn't hear coming, one that the music hasn't alluded to or foreshadowed at all, and then Billie's banshee wail transforms into a caterwaul, and my head starts to ache. A few more seconds, and the song returns to form, and then it ends. Thank God.

Do I want to hear it again? Yeah, but I need to clear my head first. I need some quiet time. I need to think. I believe I was too dismissive of the song at first, especially Jordan Billie's singing (if you can call it that). Maybe there is something to all this screeching that I hear in snippets of death-metal songs; maybe it's not that the music is unlistenable, but that I'm just not listening. I'm sure that's at least partly true. At any rate, "Laser Life" deserves kudos for the keyboard sound, for funky groove, for the couple of times they experimented with pop-song structure, and--maybe--for Billie's voice...or at least how his voice interacts with the music, even elevating it at times. I know it's art, and for that I'll list it here; I just don't know if it's very good art...kind of like those Hungarian outfits.

The vagaries of taste...who knows? Like Billie screeches, maybe we should just blame it on the laser life. That's sure to be better than blaming it on the rain.

*Note - The Opening Ceremonies were completely magnificent, the best performance art I have ever seen. I was amazed, even awestruck at times. No amount of purple prose or hyperbole can do justice to the beauty, scope, precision, and design I saw displayed Friday night. I asked myself if I had ever seen such perfect, harmonious, and congruent imagery before, and something about the ceremony's use of colors and repeated patterns seemed familiar, though I couldn't recall where I'd seen anything like that before.


When I started searching for the image of the Hungarian athletes seen above, I saw many other pictures of the Opening Ceremonies (and boston.com had the best of these photos), and then it struck me: Raise the Red Lantern. That's the title of a 1991 movie by Chinese (nee Hong Kong) director Zhang Yimou, a man who helmed many other exquisitely beautiful (and brutally honest) films such as Ju Dou, The Story of Qiu Jou, To Live, Shanghai Triad, as well as the aforementioned Raise the Red Lantern (all of which detail the harsh treatment and tragic lives of women in different eras in Chinese history). It was the images in Yimou's work, Raise the Red Lantern specifically, that I recalled, I thought, so I googled and discovered that Zhang Yiumou conceived and directed these 2008 Opening Ceremonies. Wow. Goodonya, mate.

Hotty Toddy, Part IX: The Finarle

Alarmed, we asked Nicholas where the ghost was, and he pointed and said, "There! In the bathroom!" We looked, but the door was closed...and the light was on. We crept Scooby-Doo style to the door, Nicholas behind us. We stopped right in front of the door, but Nicholas kept walking. "Let me show you," he said. Penny tried to stop him, but he went past her and pushed open the door. Nothing. Whew.

Nicholas walked into the bathroom and continued to the far end where he stopped, staring at a picture of Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, and Carl Perkins hovering around Elvis at the piano in Sun Studios in Memphis. Then, we heard a strange, far-away loping sound, as if a horse were waking across a clay court. The lights dimmed and slowly changed hue from yellow to indigo, and then Nicholas picked up a ladle (that Georgia had taken to the bathroom, for what reason I don't know) with one hand and my sunglasses with the other. He turned to his right, ever so slightly, showing us his profile, put the ladel 'neath his lips, and sang, "Blue moon/You saw me standing alone/Without a dream in my heart/Without a love of my own." Except that wasn't Nicholas singing. That wasn't his voice we heard; yet, the words, the sound emanated from his mouth. He turned completely 'round, facing us, and sang the next verse. And then the yodel.

The blue, effervescent, Jimmie Rodgers-style yodel. Nicholas pulled the ladle further and further away from his mouth, and yodeled in a voice not his own. He looked lonely. He looked heartbroken. He looked blue.

His yodeling then ceased, and he let his ladle hand slowly fall to his side. The clip-clop music faded, and Nicholas turned back to the picture, put the ladle down, took off the shades and put them down, and the light changed hue back to yellow. Nicholas then turned to us and said, "Well, guess I was wrong. No ghost." He stretched and yawned and said, "I think I'm ready to go to bed." We led him to the trundle couch-bed, and he lay down, and he fell asleep almost immediately. I told Penny that I thought that I should probably sleep with him. She nodded agreement. She said she was going to check on Georgia, and she went to the bedroom. I got into the trundle bed with Nicholas, and I fell asleep.

The next morning broke, and we hastened to ready ourselves to leave, for I wanted to follow a different route home, one that would take us by the following haunted towns:

• Thaxton
• Troy
• Houston
• Mantachie
• Ecru
• Nettleton
• Toccopola
• Pontotoc
• Tupelo
• Columbus
• Macon

Why all those towns? They're all haunted. Ghosts have been spotted at different sites in all those towns, and I had planned enough time into our itinerary for us to be able to stop, take pictures, interview locals, dig through county records, and unearth graves in every one of those bergs...and we'd still be able to be home 'fore midnight rolled 'round.

My plan hit a few snags, though. We woke up too late, for one, and then we took too garsh-darn long leaving (partially because Georgia decided to color Patrick's towels using a wide assortment of crayons), no matter how we hastened. See, I had planned on us catching breakfast on the road, leaving Oxford no later than eight. Instead, we caught lunch on the road, and left Oxford shortly after noon. All was not completely lost, even though I had to scratch half the towns from my itinerary.

We'd been travelling about thirty minutes when I realized that I hadn't seen any signs of Thaxton or Toccopola on the highway. In fact, I had just started seeing signs advertising Lafayette County such-and-such, Oxford community this-and-that. Oxford?

"Uh-oh," Penny said.

"Uh-oh what?" I asked.

"I think I told you to turn, uh, the wrong way back there. We're headed back the way we came."

We turned around, and I scratched more towns from the list. I then asked Penny to check our little friend Off the Beaten Path (by Marlo Carter Kilpatrick, now in its sixth edition, where ours is the third), the handiest travel guide we've ever had, to find the number for the Tupelo Automobile Museum, to see what time it closed, as I wondered if we'd make it there in time. She checked, but she never gave me the number. Why? That sucker is closed on Mondays. Doggone! Well, scratch Tupelo from the list. Why go there now, with the museum closed, when we'd just have to go back another year, just to see the museum and nothing else. Darn. Might as well scratch Columbus, too. And Macon. Going that route now would be a waste of time and gas. We'd have to take a more direct route home.

I was now down to just three more towns left on the list: Thaxton, Toccopola, and Pontotoc. I knew we'd have enough time to stop and explore one, but all three? The phone rang. It was Penny's friend (oh, and if she reads this, then she's my friend, too) Angie Bobo, calling to talk work, school, and Boston Butt. Go figure. I saw the sign for Thaxton up ahead, and I tapped Penny on the shoulder, trying to get her to notice, and she waved me away. I thought she was waving the town away, telling me not to take it, to just keep going; but she told me later that she didn't know what I was talking about--she thought I was just bugging her, and she was trying to shoo me away like I was Cousin Mosquito.

So, I kept driving straight. A few more miles down the road, I saw the sign for Toccopola, but Penny's still on the phone: shampoo, rinse, repeat. One town left: Pontotoc. The exit appeared, and I took it, for it's now our quickest way home. I was still happy and eager, as Pontotoc offers many haunted sites, such as the City Cemetery, Bethel chuch, the Emmanuel Baptist church, the Lochinvar mansion, and the Save-A-Lot. The Save-A-Lot, Penny asked me when I showed her the intinerary several days before? Yes, dear. The Save-A-Lot. Story goes--and the story's widespread, now, garnerning more-and-more attention each day--that several years ago, back when the store used to be Wal-Mart, that a young man had a tragic wreck at night in the parking lot. Now, whenever workers stock beer in the store, they hear tire squeals and see flashing lights. The story's been disputed because Pontotoc's a dry county, but hey--there's always bootlegging. It happens, people, oh how it still happens.

Penny (finally) hung up the phone, and we drove through Pontotoc, Penny looking for us a place to eat, while I was looking for the Save-A-Lot. We passed what looked to be a restaurant, for we saw people eating inside. I voted for finding the Save-A-Lot first, but the numbers wer against me, and we ate inside the restaurant with no name. We walked in, and we saw trucker-hatted (even the ladies) and pine-straw bearded (even the ladies) patrons stare at us, as if we were pariahs of distaste. The waitress came and stared down at us, too, Copenhagen leaking from the left corner of her lips, saying only, "'Spose you gon' want a high-char--ain'tcha?" In the corner, an eight-foot plaster-of-paris statue of Vegas Elvis stood, carrying a real hollow-bodied guitar onto which someone had scratchily carved in large letters, "Only Jesus is King." We walked through the buffet line, sat down, and I became overwhelmed with deja-vu. Had I been here before? I wasn't sure of that, but I sure knew that I didn't like this feeling. I told Penny how I felt, and she told me that she didn't like it either. We ate, paid, and left.

We weren't so sure about the mental stability of the people of Pontotoc, so we decided to skip the minor haunted places on my itinerary (the Save-A-Lot would have to wait) and just visit Lochinvar instead, since it's on our route home.

We pulled in the long gravel driveway and saw that the mansion looked uncared for, at least its overgrown yard. There's a gate there, and Penny hopped out of the Jeep to see if it was locked; it wasn't. We went slowly up the driveway, and Penny and I discussed how grand and beautiful the mansion looked--especially in comparison to its surroundings. How did the owner let the yard go like that? Was the owner even still alive? Maybe he died. Maybe...he's still in the house...still dead! Nicholas then told us to lock his door and not roll down his window again. We pulled around the driveway to the right and parked the car. Penny stepped out and started to walk around back, but we heard a bustle in the hedgerow, and we were alarmed; could this have been a spring clean for the May Queen?

Penny jumped back in the Jeep, and she told me to crank the Jeep and go. I asked her if anything was wrong, and she told me that she heard the piper calling her to join him. We winded down the road, the shadows of Lochinvar taller than our souls. We rolled down the windows, and we listened very hard, and the tune came to us at last: "Show Me the Way to Go Home."

We were tired, and we wanted to go to bed. So we went home. And went to bed. Well, Penny and the kids did anyway. I came down to my office, got on the computer, logged into eBay, and bought the stairway to Heaven. It cost me only $375.