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I’m writing from the deck with a six-string in my lap.
This isn’t just any six-string. It’s the only one I have left, the last in a long line that started back in seventh grade. That’s when my mom’s dad, my grandpa, “Poppy,” passed. That’s when I found my first guitar.
I can’t remember the brand name, but I know it was some sort of cheap, antique blues acoustic. The strings were rusty, the action so high I tore holes in my fingers just trying to find the frets.
I was stuck in Forrest City for Poppy’s funeral. I was confused and grieving. I was lonely. I’d just lost my best friend.
But then I found that old guitar in the corner of Pop’s office.
Mom took me to the local music shop the same day. I found a teach-yourself bluegrass VHS tape. The instructor looked like Bob Ross. Instead of painting “happy trees,” he taught me the basic chord shapes. By the end of that week, I was strumming and singing, “Tom Dooley.”
A year later, I’d traded in Pop’s old guitar for an Epiphone acoustic. I could play all the chords. I was in eighth grade, Mrs. Graham’s Life Science class. We were learning about stars and elliptical orbits. Jay Lieblong and Ryan Huelle sat on either side of me. At some point, we started talking music.
Ryan played bass. Jay’s dad had a drum set. And just like that, we had a band.
Our first practice took place in the Lieblongs' basement. We spent all day learning “Down on the Corner,” by Creedence Clearwater Revival. As soon as we could make it from “Early in the morning,” to “Bring a nickel, tap your feet,” we went and hunted up a phone book.
We started in the As, calling every number and asking anyone who picked up if they wanted to hear us play our one, and only, song.
I can hardly believe it now, but some people — some real saints — let us play it all the way through. Some even clapped.
A few weeks later, we had a name: “Cold Weather Bridge.” I called my Auntie E, a true Delta artist, and asked if she could work up some shirt designs. Much to our surprise, she did.
By high school, we’d added T-Baby on lead guitar, been through two new drummers, and twice as many name changes: Sound Epidemic, Kanounski, Red Morning Glory, and finally, DJ E and the MC Squares.
The band broke up when we all left for college, but I kept playing. I kept trading old guitars for new ones and learning songs I could barely sing.
The guitar in my lap now is all that remains. It’s a fine instrument, a Martin D-28 that cost me all the gear I'd accumulated over the years, and then some. I keep the strings clean, the action nice and low, but what I wouldn’t give to have that cheap blues acoustic I found in Pop’s office all those years ago.
| Books authored by Eli Cranor |
Broiler
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The troubles of two desperate families—one white, one Mexican American—converge rest in the ruthless underworld of an Arkansas chicken processing plant in this new thriller from the award-winning author of DON’T KNOW TOUGH.
Gabriela Menchaca and Edwin Saucedo are hardworking, undocumented employees at the Detmer Foods chicken plant in Springdale, Arkansas, just a stone’s throw away from the trailer park where they’ve lived together for seven years. While dealing with personal tragedies of their own, the young couple endures the brutal, dehumanizing conditions at the plant in exchange for barebones pay.
When the plant manager, Luke Jackson, fires Edwin to set an example for the rest of the workers—and to show the higher-ups that he’s ready for a major promotion—Edwin is determined to get revenge on Luke and his wife, Mimi, a new mother who stays at home with her six-month-old son. Edwin’s impulsive action sets in motion a devastating chain of events that illuminates the deeply entrenched power dynamics between those who revel at the top and those who toil at the bottom.
From the nationally bestselling and Edgar Award–winning author of Don’t Know Tough and Ozark Dogs comes another edge-of-your-seat noir thriller that exposes the dark, bloody heart of life on the margins in the American South and the bleak underside of a bygone American Dream. |
Don't Know Tough
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In Denton, Arkansas, the fate of the high school football team rests on the shoulders of Billy Lowe, a volatile but talented running back. Billy comes from an extremely troubled home: a trailer park where he is terrorized by his mother’s abusive boyfriend. Billy takes out his anger on the field, but when his savagery crosses a line, he faces suspension.
Without Billy Lowe, the Denton Pirates can kiss their playoff bid goodbye. But the head coach, Trent Powers, who just moved from California with his wife and two children for this job, has more than just his paycheck riding on Billy’s bad behavior. As a born-again Christian, Trent feels a divine calling to save Billy—save him from his circumstances, and save his soul.
Then Billy’s abuser is found murdered in the Lowe family trailer, and all evidence points toward Billy. Now nothing can stop an explosive chain of violence that could tear the whole town apart on the eve of the playoffs. |
Ozark Dogs
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In this Southern thriller, two families grapple with the aftermath of a murder in their small Arkansas town.
After his son is convicted of capital murder, Vietnam War veteran Jeremiah Fitzjurls takes over the care of his granddaughter, Joanna, raising her with as much warmth as can be found in an Ozark junkyard outfitted to be an armory. He teaches her how to shoot and fight, but there is not enough training in the world to protect her when the dreaded Ledfords, notorious meth dealers and fanatical white supremacists, come to collect on Joanna as payment for a long-overdue blood debt.
Headed by rancorous patriarch Bunn and smooth-talking, erudite Evail, the Ledfords have never forgotten what the Fitzjurls family did to them, and they will not be satisfied until they have taken an eye for an eye. As they seek revenge, and as Jeremiah desperately searches for his granddaughter, their narratives collide in this immersive story about family and how far some will go to honor, defend—or in some cases, destroy it. |
| Previous columns: |
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