Beulah Land

Meta Cranky's hometown is the source of a number of guilty pleasures. Sopapilla Cheesecake, as noted previously, is just one example. Without the good example of Herr Cranky, the CGs stay up too late watching movies, practice driving cars and pickups in the deserted driveway, and observe a shoes-optional policy, regardless of the weather.

In some circles, top-of-the-lung Methodist hymn singing is a guilty pleasure. In Cranky Hometown, there are particular summer services where the hometown congregation dusts off its Cokesbury hymnals and cuts loose with the rip-snorting early 20th-century classics that are redolent of brush arbors, IOOF halls, and WPA projects. These hymns may be the Cheese Doodles of music world: musical gourmets may sniff, but if they ever get a taste ("Wonderful Grace of Jesus," anyone?), they'll be licking the fako-food coloring off their fingers and binging in dark closets.

Let's clarify: We're not talking about the three-hanky sob-fests that Drama Queen trenchantly calls "Wurlitzer Schmaltz." I respect your right to adore those Victorian snoozers like "In the Garden," but please understand that because MC has the attention span of a gnat, these classics are wasted on her. MC's guilty pleasures are the ones with the jingly Rudyard-Kiplingesque rhythms and the friendly toggling between a thrumming, repetitious bass line (think come, come, come, come, Come to the Church in the Wildwood!) and soprano riffs that approach Queen-of-the-Night elevations. MC feels rather self-conscious about revealing that she is fascinated by retro Protestant musical arrangements, but she remembers that she saw Joe King Carrasco at Club Foot, Warren Zevon at the Stone Pony, and Lucinda Williams at the Electric Lounge; she doesn't need to prove her hipness cred to anybody.

This week, a beloved hymn-singing member of the Cranky Methodist Church passed away. Aged Alto Friend never learned to read music, but her uncanny ear unerringly found the harmonic thirds, fifths, and sevenths that give depth and feeling to a melody line. Because Alto Friend was all about those retro hymns, the choir offered up a medley of her favorites at her funeral, and MC, on the ground at CGF, got to participate. As the choir loft Magnified the Precious Name of Jesus, MC watched the we-get-it grins form on the faces of her friends and neighbors, the grins that people of a certain age usually produce when they hear ABBA on the grocery store muzak.

In the homestretch, the upper voices stretched out a chord describing the mansions bright and blessed. The men's voices stalwartly answered with with equal horsepower from the back pew. Then as the choir was bringing it in for a landing, MC's spotted Alto Friend's daughter, a school classmate. Alto Daughter was weeping, as daughters will do at their mothers' funerals, but she also was singing along. MC hadn't considered this series of events, and she almost had to sit down to think about it. She hasn't yet figured out why the image of singing grief was so moving, but it has something to do with incongruity. "When We All Get to Heaven" is an irrepressibly happy song about the Big Chill. For MC, it's an adorable, slightly kooky period piece, like a Chambers stove with a ThermoWell. But when it's your mother's favorite, it's kooky and beloved and powerful all at the same time.
--MCG