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« Flow with Hogs | Main | Roads » 
May 07, 2008 Who Makes the Moon Shine?Richard Geer - Franklin County, Georgia It's about conquering your fear, the new community performer said. He's a guy in his fifties, hasn't been onstage much if any, but he's channeling the moonshiner Leland. It's his story. He is the son of a moonshiner who help his dad with the moonshining and with his other work, which was cleaning out chicken houses. "My dad would clean out the bottom level and I'd clean out the top." Every morning he watched his dad take a drink before going to work. When it was time for the boy to go to school he did just like his dad, went to the jug, poured some in, mixed it with water and slugged it back. He immediately threw up but managed to get to the bus, climbed on board and passed out "cold as a cucumber." His dad had to come get him from school and take him home drunk on his first day of school. And then he and his dad busted up 15 gallons of liquor and both of them quit drinking. His dad went back to it after a while, but that was the end for the kid. His dad just died a couple of years ago. Much love, greatly missed. Proudly remembered. He worked a shovel and a pick, put in electricity for most of the folks who live around here. Dropped over dead in his tracks still working with the pick and shovel at 86. He's one of these guys who's got faultless timing, and can find the straightest course through a sentence to land him on the right words. Working together, mostly writing down his text changes, the local history of moonshine changed from this: "It’s been going on hundreds of years, been going on since the beginning. In Gumlog, moonshine’s been made forever." to this: Very practiced ear. And I love this man's feeling. He's thickset, and he'll get talking with pride with Vivian, our stage manager, over the way he was raised, and his cheeks flush and his eyes charge with tears at the memory of the people who raised him and the love and guidance with which he was raised. "To give respect to everyone," he proclaims. "Everything changed in 1965, with the Vietnam war," Vivian added "Nothing was ever the same again." Lived experience, the truth of the body, commitment, these are the three things the community performer can bring. The all come together in this man. A line of text will open the gates of memory and a torrent of feeling, most of it fierce love and aching loss for departed loved ones fills his face and body. Rick pushes forward through his feelings, dredging them before him, filling up his lines with heart, leaving that fear behind. EARL LELAND EARL LELAND EARL LELAND |
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