Personal Hits #3

Minnie Pearl 'How To Catch A Man'

Dad’s a good business man. Since deciding in the late 60s that he had a distaste for the middle management at Thriftway, Vendo and American Greetings, he got into cleaning places and things. To support a family of seven he had to hustle so he bought a carpet cleaning machine, a Ford Econoline van to put it in and started building accounts. Over the years he’s built his business in several dependable mega houses in what I like to call ‘the wealth containment zones’ of Mission Hills, Overland Park and and Leawood- most of whom have dogs that frequently express their waste inside. His craft is magic to them. Clean wool to step a refined socked foot on, to live graciously while fido shits the place up again.

At night dad cleaned banks, restaurants and car dealerships. These accounts were the sauce on the potatoes, a little extra dependable gravy for Heidel Brau cases,and gas to get us to the Lake of the Ozarks a couple of times a year.

Dad let me join in on some of these jobs- not because I was particularly useful, but an empty bank branch was an easy environment to have your kid along with you, giving mom a break for a little while to hang out with her pals.

The cockpit of Dad’s van was a wonderland - compartments filled with various clicky pens, bits of paper with addresses, an early Motorola brick cell phone for keeping in touch with mom, a terry cloth sweat band hanging from the rear view mirror, a thick address book and a usually full ashtray. In this control panel I was captain of the holy slot where the 8 tracks would go. He wouldn’t let me touch the radio.

Maybe It was K-tel, maybe it was Time Life, but he had a compilation of country music that I couldn’t get enough of on our trips across town. The pearl of the country classics was Minnie. Minnie Pearl- her’s was the one lady song in a long playlist of sad, sad dudes singing about being sad.

In this song, Minnie chooses violence. Her strategy was to use her inarguable beauty, like a highly evolved spider in wide brimmed Surasky Bros. flowery plastic hat with hanging price tag, to capture and subdue one of these lean, filthy, adorably lachrymose, hard partying alcoholic motherfuckers.

Here’s her advice and method :

Now, when a handsome feller smiles at you

What harm can a little flirtin’ do?

And if he steals a kiss, now don’t get sore

Remember, you’ve got plenty more!

How to catch a man, how to catch a man

Girls are always askin’ me

“How do you catch a man?”

Catch him while you can

With the Minnie Pearl plan

Here’s a little tip on how to catch a man

Hog-tie him!

Tell him this and keep a straight face, hon

Tell him two can live as cheap as one!

Promise him anything, and you will find

That after you are married, you can change your mind!

How to catch a man, how to catch a man

Girls are always askin’ me

“How do you catch a man?”

Catch him while you can

With the Minnie Pearl plan

Here’s a little tip on how to catch a man

Get a Bear trap!

It’s my sense that nowadays these ways are frowned upon, with consent winning rightfully out as the sexier of the methods of partner attraction and retention, but Minnie, god love her, chose brute force in a time when the men were a maybe a little more feral.