The world we live in today has become a minefield of opposing doctrines, political correctness, and social awkwardness. So I write the following with some trepidation. But last night my friend and I stumbled into that minefield, and it was such a hurdle that now you get to read about much of what has whizzed through my redneck mind since.
A buddy of mine, ever in search of the latest and best information on our region’s tourist and entertainment scene, was headed to La Grange Saturday evening, and invited me to come along. It had been awhile since I had gone on one of his adventures, so I kissed my wife good bye without supper and jumped in his jeep.
I am going to skip a lot and blog separately about other sights we explored on the way, and want to cut to the chase, as I can predict this to be a two-parter.
Our destination was a music venue I have heard a great deal about for several years, all good, but because I have so much fun in Navasota, have never found myself there: The Bugle Boy.
You guys know I love music, and musicians, and writing about them. I wish that is what this blog was all about, but as you will read, the evening turned out to inspire a great deal more than art appreciation... Never the less, the evening started out with the usual introductions, a hefty cover charge, and me promising to be discreet with my camera.
Catie Curtis’ name burned through the glow up on the Bugle Boy sign outside. And as the evening wore on, she burned through more than that. Catie is a very successful songwriter, having songs used on several television shows and such, and has a smile as big as Texas. Instantly you like her. She speaks and sings sweetly of her origins in New England, her father and his junk in the yard, growing up in Maine and swimming in the river wide, and her wife and children back home.
That's right. Catie’s heart speaks from a Massachusetts Liberal stronghold, where marriage is recognized between lovers of the same sex. She is proud to report the progress of her social order, and the adaptations she and others have made to reconstruct the American family paradigm. She is not only a talented, successful singer-songwriter, but an emboldened lesbian iconoclast, and it is evident that she considers herself a representative for the Gay Rights movement. In the unfolding history of the Gay Rights movement, which has really only just begun in Texas, she diplomatically speaks for her kind, given the high visibility she has.
As she explained her homosexuality, her marriage and adoption of two children, even the challenge of defining what it is to be gay, she basked in this modest yet comfortable place in La Grange, Texas that she called an oasis. Whatever my theories or convictions are about her lifestyle, she is right about the Bugle Boy. And I especially love my country because she could stand and make such testimonies, safely, even in a small Texas town like La Grange, and I would fight anybody for her to have that right. A part of me admires anybody who gets up in front a group of strangers and takes a stand for something they believe in. Even more so for a belief that is not popular, that could bring on rejection and persecution. I do not have to agree with someone to have empathy for their cause and sympathy for their struggle.
Catie is a very admirable person, but read on, for I believe that she might choose a more worthy sword to fall on.
Next time… on the Navasota Current.
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