Don't Tread on Ferlin

I listened to my iPod's honky tonk playlist as I drove around today.
No, not the crappy country music that the local radio stations play. That crap all sounds the same to me, like the current Nashville producers are simply concocting all these bands and singers by combining ingredients from some generic kit.
There's not much "country" in that music.
No, I filled my honky tonk playlist with stuff you would hear in a roadside honky tonk back in... oh... 1964 or so.
So there's no Toby... no Tim... no Keith....
Just guys like Buck and George and Hank and Faron and Hank (that's another Hank).
Oh... and Ferlin.
I have got three songs on the playlist that Ferlin Husky recorded back in the 1950s, when he was trying to make it as a rockabilly star. They are exciting and filled with a love of life. They are songs to be sung along to at the top of your lungs. Which I do, so it's a good thing I drive around with the windows rolled up.
Ferlin based himself in Bakersfield. I love the idea that 111 miles north of Hollywood there was a town with a beer-soaked honky tonk on every corner. Bakersfield!
As I drove around today, I pretended I wasn't headed to college press conferences or the dance studio to pick up my daughter. I pretended I was headed for that mythical honky tonk in my own mythical Bakersfield, where I could...
Whoah! I was driving around pretending I was driving to a mythical honky tonk in a mythical Bakersfield?!?!
That's either the coolest thing or the stupidest thing, I have ever pretended to do. Whoah.