My Baby Done Left Me

Heck, the whole clan has left me -- for this week only.
My wife is attending a corporate sales meeting in Florida this week and our two girls are visiting their cousin in central Iowa this week.
I began missing them before they had even left, which is actually a bit pathetic when you think about it. I am not cut out for the solitary life, I think, and it is only a matter of time before I begin holding extended conversations with my daughters' stuffed animals.
Before descending into full-scale despondency, I decided to listen to some good ol'fashioned country music as I drove around today.
I selected the "George Jones Definitive Collection, 1955-62" CD, one of my favorite CDs.
In the years before he specialized in string-laden, alcohol-fueled pathos, Jones produced a varied body of work. In "White Lightning," for example, he helped create a template for a type of redneck comedy record that has remained a good-time staple of the Nashville scene. With "Cup of Loneliness" and similar songs, Jones produced works of genuine sadness... not the overly maudlin stuff of his latter career.
Then, there's "You're Still on My Mind," one of my favorite songs of all-time in any genre of music. The anguished classicism of its lyrics and slowed tempo conjure a vision of a man sitting alone at a table in a tavern, happiness having seemingly passed him by.
I adore George Jones for that song alone, and his music today proved the perfect soundtrack for a sad-sack who apparently can't even last a single day without his family.