Buck Owens Gone

Here we go again.

Listening to Weekend Edition on WOSU radio while enjoying my normal nutritious breakfast of a pot of coffee and half a pack of cigarettes when I hear that yet another pop culture icon of my childhood has bit the old dust. Its enough to make a forty year old blogger and cartoonist already predisposed to morbid thoughts turn once again to considerations of his own mortality, which, with a diet such as I described above, might not be that far off.

Buck Owens, best known, to me at least, as the co-host, with Roy Clark, of Hee-Haw, as well as for writing a song, Act Naturally, that was covered by the Beatles, died on Saturday at age 76.

As I grew up and became "sophisticated," I came to look down my nose at Hee-Haw, but when I was just a kid who didn't know any better I loved it. After all, with its mix of old jokes, silly songs, goofy characters and even a little animation thrown in, Hee-Haw was the very archetype of a classic kids show.

Hmm, let's see if I can find some sort of point here....ok, let's try this:

"Sophisticated" as I may be, there are times when I miss the simple pleasures of childhood, especially when dealing with my job and bills and all that other crap that "adults" do, and despite the years I spent denying it, Hee- Haw was one of those simple pleasures and unfortunately it took the news of Buck Owens' death to remind me of that.