Day 94 – The Coke Bottle Boys

Lights came up. A roar erupted. Two lanky men walked onstage. Folks shushed each other so they could hear Emmet begin the way he began every time. But it hadn’t always been that way for these country boys.

Growing up they didn’t have much but picking and singing. In Pickatoo, there was a creek, and that was pretty much all you could say. Wyatt’s daddy taught him the guitar. Emmet’s granddaddy taught him the banjo. In a town of less than three hundred, of course they eventually got together. The locals started calling them the Coke Bottle Boys, since they both wore glasses so thick they could’ve been Coke bottle bottoms.

Feeling the call of the fame and fortune, the pair set out to play their first show at the ripe, old age of sixteen at a county fair in Fabryville. It was mostly a hog show, but they had a ride or two, so to a couple of young yokels like Emmet and Wyatt, this was the big leagues.

They had the jitters something awful. It helped none at all that they were playing mostly to folks standing in line to ride the tilt-a-whirl or look at prize pigs. But they went up there and played their damnedest. After everybody ignored their fourth song, Emmet called down to the prettiest girl at the fair: “What’s your name, ma’am?”

“Sandy,” she replied.

He began picking, and Wyatt soon followed. “Sandy, Sandy, I’m in a strange land-y, and ain’t nobody listening to me. Sandy, Sandy, it sure would be grand-y, if you would dance to this here beat. Sandy, Sandy, come on, give me a hand-y, and sway your hips and move your feet.”

Sandy blushed and danced a little. The crowd was paying attention now, and they began clapping and hollering requests up to the stage. The thrill that the boys had been waiting for hit them in the chest, and Emmet said the words that would follow them to every show for thirty years after: “Well, hello, folks. Back in Picaktoo they call us the Coke Bottle Boys. We’re gonna play a few songs for you tonight, if that’s alright with you.”

Obviously I do not own the rights to the Coke name, etc. That is owned by the Coca-Cola company. Duh.


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