The Last Ride of Mustang Sally

I have to admit, I took an immediate dislike to Parker Tennessee the second I laid eyes him. No good reason, aside from his athletic build, heroic jawline, and soulful brown eyes. You know, because an outdoorsy REI catalogue model-type is just who you want hanging around when you look like Ducky from Pretty in Pink. Especially in the opening weeks of mix-and-match dorm life with a bunch of horny twenty-somethings coming and going through a summer adventure working in Yellowstone Park. I didn’t need any comparisons with the likes of Parker Tennessee to feel like a Fig Newton on a plate full of Christmas cookies, believe me.

Look at him, just sitting there with that wavy mane of chestnut locks, smoking out on the porch of our dilapidated little dorm like he owned the joint, just blasé as hell. How dare you, sir? I invented smoking on this porch, you smug sonuvabitch. And those cheekbones of yours are sharp enough to cut glass, which is a safety hazard! Ever think of that? No, you only think about yourself, Mr. Fancypants. This porch ain’t big enough for the both of us, pal. And I was here first.

Me and Runa New Mexico on the Lodgepole Dorm porch

All of this I thought as I sat there studiously not talking to him, nonchalantly ignoring him, all Zen and shit. Yup, just Zen as fuck as I watched the parade of lovely ladies giving him the side-eye or exchanging little smiles with him as they passed. He never said a word to any of them though, snootily preferring his stony silence instead. In fact, it was days before I heard his aloof ass say a word to anyone. As it turns out, that someone was me.

“Hey, b-b-bro,” he began. “C-c-can I bum a s-s-m-moke from you?”

At first, I thought he was making fun of me. He was tall, athletic, and good-looking. It wouldn’t have been the first time a member of the genetic elite had seen fit to mock a guy like me out of the blue. Although the stuttering routine seemed like an oddly specific way to ridicule someone you’ve never met. He had a baritone voice, rich and deep, with a courtly southern accent. If he was insulting me, I didn’t get it, so I decided to play it off.

“Sure.” I offered him my hardpack of Camel Wides. He started to take the only upturned smoke from the center of the pack. “Whoah, whoah. Not the Lucky, dude,” I said.

“Huh?” he asked, looking perplexed.

“The Lucky. You turn that one up when you first open the pack and then smoke it last so’s ya don’t get cancer?” I replied. Surprised that a fellow smoker didn’t know to take the precaution. “You never smoke another man’s Lucky.”

Obviously bemused, he smiled sheepishly and took a different smoke. Then said, “Sorry, n-n-ever heard of that. W-w-we d-d-d-on’t do that in T-t-ennesee.”

“Well shit, brother. What do you do about the cancer stick?”

“Uhhh, n-n-not s-s-smoke, I guess?” He had a bashfulness about him when he spoke, but a really nice, genuine smile. It was getting harder to hate him by the second.

“Well, sure, if you want to be all sensible about it. But since I’m not about to start doing that…”

“The L-l-lucky,” he said.

“The Lucky,” I agreed.

He lit us both from his zippo and leaned back against the rickety porch railing next to me. For the first time in the week we’d been sharing the Lodgepole Dorm porch, we smoked in affable silence for a minute. Funny how stony silence can become affable silence in the blink of an eye.

“So what else don’t you Tennesseans do?” I asked.

“C-cuss, chew, or g-g-go with girls that d-do,” he replied at the ready.

“Well that eliminates a lot of candidates,” I replied.

“It sure d-does. Wh-why do you think I’m h-h-here?” he asked.

I thought about that for a second. “To find a nice girl who chews tobacco and date the hell out of her, I guess.”

L-R: Sean Pennsylvania, Lawrence Oregon, Jesse Utah, Lang South Carolina, Kristin Illinois, and Eddie Arizona

Spending the summer working in Yellowstone Park drew folks together from all fifty states and a half-dozen foreign countries. We sang for our supper in return for room, board, and minimum wage, as we provided logistical support of the tourists who also came from around the world, performing all manner of services from vacation reservations, to housekeeping, maintenance, and cooking. As such, all of us wore employee name-tags with our first names and the state we hailed from, which seemed to confuse an alarming number of Touron (tourist + moron) who thought it was strange how many of us had the last name of states. The employees took the expected Touron inanity in stride and referred to each other as though the state were indeed our last name.

So Parker Tennessee called me Lawrence Oregon and proceeded to drag me about eating granola and hugging trees. In reply, I just whistled Dueling Banjos back at him, which every southerner just loves. If you’ve never been an insult battle with a proper southerner, I highly recommend it. They can lay down a pretty sick burn and you might not actually realize it's happened. In fact, maybe you even agree with them a little bit. A knife so sharp you don’t even feel it going in.

Over the course of the next couple of days, I’d meet Parker on the porch for a couple of smokes a day at various times. He was a cook over in the employee cafeteria, and was biding the days until we got our first paycheck because he’d run out of smokes a few days shy of the finish line. I was sitting on a carton I’d hoarded against just such an eventuality, so I had enough to dole out a few per day to him and a couple other poor souls in need, because I’m a helluva guy. He was on a break from Culinary School in Kentucky, just looking to kick up his heels for the summer before his senior year. Which was more of a plan than I had, just on the run from life in general.

As I spent more time with Parker Tennessee, I saw that each interaction with a new person cost him a little something. Because in those opening moments, when the other person didn’t know about his stutter, they had varying degrees of surprise and/or confusion go across their face as they decided how to react. Most people were cool, and just rolled with it. But one or two snickered, several more got uncomfortable and found an immediate excuse to exit the conversation, and still others openly pitied him. Even the ones who were decent human beings about it still had a moment of realization that went across their face in some form or another.

Parker was highly attuned to it, and mostly stayed in the background when he could. I didn’t blame him. If even I could see the whole script play across their faces in that moment, how much more for him who had been dealing with it his whole life? With every new person, every time? That’s rough. He’d jump in a kick a hacky-sack or shoot some hoops if he knew everyone in the crew, and he was well liked by the small-ish circle of those of us he hung with. But he rarely ever talked to girls, which made him seem like a snob because he was ostensibly a talented athlete and a perfect specimen. When I thought of my own troubles breaking the ice with the opposite sex—shyness, nerdiness, goof-ball looks—I suddenly felt glad that those were my only handicaps. I’d never seen a girl outright reject Parker, but when we were hanging out in the employee bar I’d seen a couple of them excuse themselves to go to the bathroom and not “remember” to come back. I guess all of us are fighting our own battle in one way or another.

After a few weeks, the players had all sifted into place for our summer adventure, and we’d sort of picked our crew that we hiked, camped, and drank with. We’d spend a few nights a week in the smokey employee bar, shooting pool and hooking up. The head bartender, Bob Minnesota, was always looking for ways to keep the natives happy, because employee turnover in an environment like that was a huge problem. Although Bob Minnesota was voted the guy least likely to be named Bob, he had the best ponytail I’d ever seen and he excelled at drumming up business. Trivia games, drink specials, dart tournaments, just about anything you could think of to keep a flighty group of drunks, neo-hippies, and perpetual party people from moving on down the road before their employment contracts were up. I guess it was inevitable that he’d dream up an open mic night at some point. Hell, we’d had a magician come through to do card tricks and pull a bra out of my shirt for me. How much worse could an open mic night be?

As it turns out, Parker Tennessee was going to test that theory for us.

I formed a little power trio with Dave Michigan and Jesse Utah to perform a couple of Pearl Jam songs, which were met with a rousing response. Full disclosure, I doubt a sober crowd would have received us as charitably, but I take my wins wherever I can find them. You’ve heard worse, I promise. After us, a couple of less-than-stellar Grateful Dead covers were met with tepid reactions, at which point I saw Parker get up from his stool at the bar and walk over to the little stage. I thought he was going to help one of the poor Grateful Dead guys with their instruments or equipment, but he didn’t. Instead, he leaned in like he was whispering conspiratorially with Tre Florida, the poor bastard who’d just finished murdering Fire on the Mountain. Tre looked at Parker dubiously, then shrugged and handed Parker his guitar.

Parker took the guitar, slung the strap over his shoulder, perched on a barstool, and slid up to the mic. You could feel the silence sweep across the room in a palpable wave as, one by one, every conversation came to an abrupt end when people realized what was about to happen. Within five seconds, we went from a chattering mass of drunkards to a uniformly silent congregation, solemnly considering the disastrous implications of what we were witnessing. You could have heard a pin drop as Parker Tennessee strummed the borrowed guitar, obviously stalling as he nervously tuned the strings. There wasn’t one person in that room that wanted to see him to drive off the cliff of humiliation he was careening toward, but not one of us could look away either.

When he could tinker no more, Parker cleared his throat and started to say something into the mic. A couple of stuttered plosives came out and then he thought better of it, sat back, and just started strumming. He played with a bit of confidence, and the steel-stringed guitar resonated warmly in the dim little pub. The chords were simple, a standard one-four-five progression, but there could be no doubt that he was in his element as he dropped into the groove. Whatever initial jitters he’d had fell away as he closed his eyes, leaned into the mic, and started to sing.

My God, you’ve never heard anything like the wall of sound that came out of that boy’s mouth.

“MUSTANG SALLY!” he belted, his powerhouse voice a visceral shock, like getting gut punched. “THINK YOU BETTER SLOW YOUR MUSTANG DOWN!” His baritone was as raw as a stray dog howling, so powerful and so completely unexpected, it shook the room.

After a moment of stunned disbelief—the whole room rocked back in their seats like they’d been hit by an earthquake, mouths agog at this breathtaking display of emotion and talent—a spontaneous burst of praise and enthusiasm enveloped the entire pub, briefly drowning Parker out. It felt like a mix of unparalleled relief at seeing him succeed in defiance of all expectation, and genuine astonishment at this huge talent confronting us. He was like a beast out of Greek mythology, equal parts Joe Cocker and roaring lion.

When he finished, there was a moment of dumbfounded silence. It only lasted for a beat, then we erupted into cheers, whistles, and cat-calls for the Tennessee Kid. A dozen people “rushed” the stage—by which I mean they took ten steps or less—to clap Parker on the back, smother him in high-fives, and buy him enough beers to kill two girls. It was like we’d all just found out that our hometown boy, li’l ol’ Clark Kent, was actually Superman. 

If Parker Tennessee was on the fringes before, he wasn’t anymore. After that, he got invited to join in everyone’s Reindeer Games. Girls that had been on the fence were suddenly lighting his smokes. And the open mic became a weekly event where Parker was King. I would certainly never follow him on those nights, and of course, I had no choice but to go back to hating him, just a little. You know, because of what a helluva guy I am. I heard a couple people ask over the next few days if Parker was faking a speech impediment for sympathy, because how could he have such a profound issue in one moment, and then literally transform into a rock star in the next? 

But I’ve long known the truth about Music. It’s not a human invention, like guitars and pianos. It’s a discovery, like fire. It exists as an intrinsic pillar of nature, irrespective of human existence. As such, it comes to us through osmosis, through inspiration, by way of magic and revelation. It has the transcendent power to circumvent logic, rationality—and every other reason-why-not—entirely as we channel it through ourselves and into the world. Nothing can stop it. Stutters, Alzheimer’s, traumatic brain injury, all be damned.

I’ve heard Mustang Sally a million times since that summer of ’95. I think of Parker every single time. Some people think it’s a Wilson Picket song, others swear that The Commitments made it their own. But they’re wrong. I saw Parker Tennessee take old Sally out for a spin in that Mustang and she never came back again.