Press play to hear an iPhone voice memo home recording of my new song! (Read or sing along to the lyrics by scrolling to the bottom of this letter. Play along on your instrument or whistle the solo in the Key of F.) If you’d like to buy this song for your mixed tape (aka playlist), you can find it here!
Sometimes songs just take hold of me unexpectedly. I have plenty of songs I’m thinking about in the background of whatever I’m doing – songs about people who are important to me or places I love. I have lots of family stories written down and waiting for me to write their songs. But then I wake up with a line or two in my head and I think, “Where did that come from?” I hadn’t thought of them or that in a long time.
That’s what happened with this new song about Uncle Harlis and Aunt Freda. If you’ve been reading my newsletters and essays for a long time and, if you’ve bought my CDs, you’ll know how much I love old photos. My CD envelopes and booklets are full of old family photos of the places and people of my songs.
I spent ten years of my life touring and playing concerts with an Airstream Bambi travel trailer in tow. I crossed America eight times, spent ten winters in Florida, and traveled to lots of other places in the USA depending on where I found singing work.
So, it’s no wonder that I used to love going over to Aunt Freda and Uncle Harlis’ house when I was a little kid. I must have had that travel bug in me all those years ago. They had an RV and loved to drive all over the USA fishing (both of them), knitting (Aunt Freda), and taking pictures of everything. Then they’d come home and show slides and movies to us kids on a screen in their living room. As technology moved on, those movies became videos from a video camera which they showed on their big wooden console TV.
They both had great names: Harlis Vester and Freda Belle. They owned a sporting goods store in Richlands, Virginia, call H & V Sporting Goods which had that name when they bought it, but it’s pretty neat that “H & V” were also Harlis’ initials. The folks who bought it from them kept the name, too, because it was such a fine small town business where you could get rifles, fishing poles, crossbows, and all manner of such things. Harlis and Freda were both great at outdoors-y-ness.
But Freda could also sew, crochet, and knit. She had a terrible sensitivity to cold and had to wear gloves in the grocery store because it hurt her hands to touch cold fruit and things in the freezer section. This meant that when she offered us kids a cold drink at her house, she always put little “sweaters” around our glasses or bottles of coke. She also had these fantastic refrigerator decorations that looked like bunches of grapes. But they were in fact bottle tops which she’d crocheted around, joined together, and finished off with a crocheted stem. They could be placed on the table or countertop and used as trivets!
When I was a child, I stared at things like this in speechless wonder. And there was plenty to fascinate me at her house because she had all kinds of doilies, table scarfs, coasters, and towels which she’d made or embellished. Her house was as neat as a pin and they had a clear plastic cover over their sofa. It was a museum of home craft and domestic tidiness. They even had sugar cubes to put in your iced tea. They had no children and I think Aunt Freda was happy to spend time with a little kid who thought she was a crafting superhero – which she certainly was.
Because they kept their RV in the driveway, we could sit inside it and pretend we were on the road. And a couple of times we got to sleep over and stay in the camper. Little did I know that this would become my whole life for ten years when I toured with my duo Jeni & Billy.
Uncle Harlis passed away in 2008 and Aunt Freda passed away in 2011. She was my Grandaddy Hankins’ sister and they have all passed away now, so there’s no one to ask for a photograph of them. But, luckily, I have two pictures of Freda and I’m glad that I can share them with you. One is at the top of this letter and the other is her school photo:
I don’t have any photos of Harlis and Freda’s travels because they were looked after by Harlis’ relatives at the end of their lives and I never did know any of their extended family. But as you listen to this song, I hope you can imagine sitting on their green plaid sofa with peanuts and a coca-cola in your hand, dreaming their American dream through the magic of a Kodak slide projector.
Thanks to my paid subscribers who supported me in the making of this song! Woohooo! Hugs! If you’ve enjoyed this song and would like to give me the gift of time to write songs and letters, you can become a paid subscriber to this newsletter for $5 a month (or $55 for a year!). Or you could put money in my tip jar here if so inclined. Stanley Bear and I say, “Thank you!” You can always find my records in my online shop and listen to more story songs, heart songs, and protest songs. Thank you very much. Your tips and subscriptions really DO make a difference to me!
Love and friendship from me to you!
Jeni
Here are the lyrics to my newest song! Key of F, play and sing along! Jeni tip: I don’t play my guitar in F (ugh, Bb chord is hard on my hands), so I capo on the fifth fret and play C, F, and G chords. That’s all you need. Yay! (Or you can capo on the first fret and play E, A, and B7 chords. So many options that don’t involve the dreaded Bb chord. See, it’s all OK. No stress :)
The American Dream (Harlis and Freda) Uncle Harlis and Aunt Freda (she was my grandaddy’s sister) had a Kodak slide projector and their very own movie screen. We’d have peanuts and coca-cola on their green plaid sofa while they showed us a hundred pictures of everywhere they’d been. All the way to California, Idaho and Utah, they’d seen the Grand Canyon and the Grand Coulee Dam. Niagara Falls and Houston, the Great Lakes, the Alamo, Florida alligators, cattle by The Rio Grande. They never left the country ‘cause America was so big – always another highway to a place they hadn’t seen. Aunt Freda took her knitting. Uncle Harlis, he went fishing. They came home with a hundred pictures of the American dream. They sold fishing poles and rifles, crossbows and split shot, taxidermy deer at the country store they owned. She made coasters and doilies, little sweaters for our colas. We’d sleep in their camper and dream about the road. My cousin bought their camper. They gave me their Kodak camera. They retired down in Florida – said their traveling days were through. But I never will forget how they took us across America on a green plaid sofa from their little living room. ©Jeni Hankins, BMI 2023
P.S. Here’s a photo of my hollyhocks. Aunt Freda was a hollyhocks kind of gal, too!
P.P.S. And here’s another photo of Westcliffe, Colorado. Ahhhhh…
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