Welcome to the Election Week edition of this column. There will be no endorsing of candidates for office (that’s best left to daily newspapers with editorial boards like the Washington Post), political jokes, or misinformation about polling places or times, but I will be doing something we’ve all come to enjoy during the seemingly endless American campaign for president: fact checking.
I think I appreciate fact-checking more than ever now because of its futility in our current “information” environment. It’s just innocent and almost charming to me that someone still bothers, given how much of an uphill slog it is. It was the writer Jonathan Swift who in 1710 (give or take a few decades) said, “Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect.” This was written well before the era of the false Facebook meme (shared over 5,000 times).
A more plain-spoken, or at least less 18th-century way of putting it has circulated in various forms for many years, and has been attributed to people ranging from Winston Churchill, to Mark Twain, to Mac Wiseman: “A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on.” So we can see the problem is not a new one, only the rate at which a lie spreads.
I’ve been thinking that it’s long past time we tried to at least clean up our little portion of the world and fact-check some of our bluegrass standards we know and love but should still be just a little skeptical about.
I’m going try to stick to the standard fact-checking style used by the various news outlets for presidential debates and the like: we’ll divide “claims” into categories: “True,” “False,” “Exaggerated,” or “Needs Context.”
Let’s start with a fairly contemporary one:
Wagon Wheel
From what I think is verse three:
Walkin’ to the south out of Roanoke
I caught a trucker out of Philly, had a nice long toke
But he’s a-headin’ west from the Cumberland Gap
To Johnson City, Tennessee
False
. . . at least geographically. Most of us with any bluegrass music experience know very well that if you head west from the Cumberland Gap, you’ll be driving away from Johnson City, Tennessee. Add to this the fact that the singer was going from New England to Raleigh, NC, so he shouldn’t have been in Roanoke in the first place. I blame the “nice long toke.”
Hills of Roane County
But her brother stabbed me for some unknown reason
Needs context
It’s extremely rare that people you know—especially those related to your fiance—will stab you “for some unknown reason.” Our research team (two unemployed bass players) hasn’t yet determined what the backstory is here, but there’s no doubt there is one.
P.S. Travel tip: if you head west from the village of Kingston in Roane County, TN, you also won’t get to Johnson City.
I Don’t Believe You’ve Met My Baby
He said my sister wants to marry
Then my heart was filled with ease
I knew that you would marry me
False
Our researching bass players did manage to uncover this important fact: the woman in question, whose arm was resting on the shoulder of this stranger, was in fact an only child, so this was not her brother, which explains all the looking at him, looking at you, looking at me business: they wanted to know if the singer was actually falling for this trick. We should really give this song a pass, though, because it was all a dream, anyway.
Down the Road
Old Man Flatt he owned a farm
From the hog lot to the barn
From the barn to the rail
He made his living by carrying the mail
Needs context
Why not from the hog lot straight to the rail? Why is it necessary to measure to the barn first? There has to me more to this spacially confusing story (with thanks to Jon Weisberger and Ned Luberecki).
I’ll Go Steppin’ Too
I’ll lock the door. put out the cat
And I’ll go steppin’ too
False
It’s physically impossible to lock the door and then put out the cat, unless perhaps there’s a cat door. In which case why would you bother? The cat will just come back inside.
Old Rattler
Grandpa had a muley cow, muley when she’s born
Took a jaybird 40 years to fly from horn to horn
Exaggeration
There is no verifiable account of a jaybird flying from horn to horn of even the muleiest cow in any more than 12 seconds, and that was a directionally challenged jaybird that might have been trying to fly west from the Cumberland Gap to Johnson City, Tennessee.
