by Phyllis McCrossin
I think one of the biggest differences between King and me is the way we appreciate music and watch TV.
King can basically take it or leave music; but get a few beers in him and he will listen to anything – at ear splitting decibels. It’s quite annoying, actually, and I’m quite relieved it is not a daily occurrence.
To top off the painfully loud music, he likes to sing along – at least those few lines he knows.
It goes something like this: mmmmmmmm Ring of Fire mmmmmm higher and higher mmmmm.
I don’t know if he might know a second verse because before we get to it, the music station gets switched. He scrolls through the Sirius stations looking for something he likes — it could be rock, it could be Y2K (he chaperoned a lot of high school dances in his other life) or it could be classical. And we get to listen to one or two bars of a song before he starts scrolling again.
When he hits a classical station and sticks to it, I like to annoy him be telling him who the composer is (Yes, I’m THAT person). And if, during his scrolling, he happens upon a song (generally oldies) that I like, I have to pretend to be disinterested. One simple foot tap, or lip sync and the station is changed again.
But it’s not just music that he switches. He does the same thing with the TV. He generally has two or three TV shows he follows at one time. I don’t watch TV much, but listening from my reading corner in the trailer I can usually tell what he’s watching. Old TV Westerns are his favorite, along with “Bewitched” and “Andy Griffith.” But we often switch from CNN to “Tales of Wells Fargo,” to “Wagon Train” to “Green Acres” in a matter of minutes.
I can stop my reading for a moment, listen briefly and say to myself, “Oh, it’s the ‘Wagon Train’ show. The episode where they ran out of water and almost die in the desert until a friendly Indian rescues them after the young girl with a crush on the bad boy in the next wagon runs away because her parents don’t understand her.” But sometimes he switches so quickly I’m not certain if the Wagon Train has ended up in Hooterville by mistake.
Once in a while I’ll sit with him and watch. He gets quite annoyed with me however, because not only do I know all the actors, I know their horses as well. I’ll point things out like Dale Robertson’s (Tales of Well Fargo) horse’s name was Jubliee and was a 16 hands high Quarter Horse, and that Robertson actually owned the horse and he was purchased at the Hollywood Race Track. (Try saying that in one breath while being shushed).
Audie Murphy’s horses name was Joe Queen — another Quarter Horse. And John Wayne’s favorite horse was a Quarter Horse named Dollor – no 
“a” in Dollor. Wayne signed exclusive movie rights to the horse, but did not own him. For “True Grit” fans, it’s the horse that jumps the fence before Wayne rides off into the sunset in the movie.
King may think I’m an annoying know-it-all, but after 40 some years of trying to watch TV with him, I have to do something with that time – so I spend a lot of time looking up useless trivia.
But don’t tell him that. Let him think I’m a know-it-all.
