The good book

Ira and I went to play the Louisiana Hayride in Shreveport, with a couple of hours off between the first and second show, so we were fixing to walk across the street to this little old restaurant they had across from the Shreveport Memorial Auditorium. We stepped off the curb, and I saw a man lying by the sidewalk, dead drunk, puke running about five feet from his head down to the gutter.

"Who in the shit is that?" I asked Ira.

"That's Hank Williams," Ira said, scorn in his voice.

And it was. He had just got so drunk he couldn't make it from the Hayride over to the restaurant. It was tragic to see. A man with ability, talent, and future like the one he had, to see him waste it on the bottle.

I believe writers are born writers of music. I don't believe anyone can teach you how to write a song. If you weren't born to write, you'll never write anything worth passing along. And if you ask me, Hank was one of the two greatest songwriters of our time. And the other, Ira, he became a real drinker, too.

-- from "Satan Is Real: The Ballad of the Louvin Brothers"

I can watch old silent-movie clips of my latest fave Buster Keaton in "Steamboat Bill Jr.," or of the great Bessie Smith singing a barroom version of "St. Louis Blues," on my iPhone. I have 11,355 songs on my iPod, including 322 just by Bob Dylan. My wife, who devours books like no one I've ever known, hasn't stuck her head inside one since she got the Kindle.

And yet ... if we could go back to the way it was -- to the days when print was king, when the physical product was the thing -- I'd drive the time machine and spring for the gas. But there's no going back, I suppose. Some day soon, my mind will tell a screen the size of our living room wall that we want to watch "Repo Man" or "Local Hero," or something with Bogie, and the movie will start playing with us still sitting on our rumps. Maybe technology will be such that some robot thing will go get us fresh beers, pop the tops and everything. Goodness knows the greyhounds are not so inclined. So that would be sweet, sure -- the beer-fetching technology, I mean -- but otherwise, well, I do so very much miss the olden days. It seems like it was just -- well, it was, in a sense -- a few minutes ago...

But small victories, boys. Small victories. Yesterday in the book store (yes, we still have one or two in Memphis) I bought "Satan is Real," in which pretty much the greatest album cover ever (God, I miss album covers) has become pretty much the greatest book cover ever. It's a beautiful thing to have and to hold, to save and savor, this book -- and that's even before I start reading it. I can't wait. Print is real.