I’m a sucker for sub-cultures, for areas where passion and the search for the ultimate rule. I’m seduced by truck pulls where modified vehicles pull mega-weighted sleds until their tires hop over the trucked-in dirt of a coliseum and the chassis pumps like a souped up Chevy jumping in the barrio.
Years ago we watched a truck pull on TV. The sweat gleamed on the ecstatic face of the winner. “Why do you use a diesel truck?” the lady commentator asked.
“Because I like diesel,” the winner replied.
Yessir. In that moment, I liked diesel, too.
Thank God for cable, though. Would I go to a truck and tractor pull? Not likely. Setting aside the cultivated head banger hillbilly persona, just the idea of an arena filled with gas fumes and whining engines makes me dizzy.
At the other end of the socio-political spectrum, I dig the community fair atmosphere at a folk music festival. I went to my first Philadelphia Folk Festival (PFF) last month and reveled in its back-to-nature-we’re-all-family-here traditions. Did I get the full flavor of the festival by camping? Are you kidding me? To me, camping is a bed and breakfast with en-suite bathrooms but no elevator.
Thankfully I attended PFF as management for Kerri Powers, so we stayed in the one convention-ready hotel in the area. Believe me, it was worth the hour waits for the shuttle and the 40-minute van rides to avoid needing hip waders for the mud of the camp grounds. Even so, I returned home with shoes fragrant with the aromas of a working farm.
We met a young volunteer who was born during the PFF weekend and had attended the festival every year since. And we chatted with Gene Shay, legendary deejay on WXPN and a founder of the festival. With a hitch in his voice, he recounted his wonder at how an idea born more than 40 years ago had blossomed into an annual gathering of thousands of people.
In that moment, I liked folk music.
And in that moment I wasn’t too far from my sweaty friend who likes diesel. Our kin once worked the same fields, skirted the same swamps, and traded musical traditions and instruments (remember, the banjo originated in Africa) until the co-mingling blended into the origins of American roots music. But in the words of Tony Joe White, that was another place and another time. After a few days in the folk community of PFF, I’d like to think those times might come around again.
Because I like diesel.
Gene Shay and Kerri Powers at Philly Folk Fest
Photo: Brenda Prescott
