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"Oh, baby, I'm gonna love you forever/ Forever and ever, amen" – as sung by Randy Travis.
When I was a second-grader, I was fascinated by the short-lived ABC sitcom "The Second Hundred Years."
In the far-fetched program, Monte Markham played a 33-year-old Alaskan "gold rush" prospector who was buried in a glacial avalanche and preserved in suspended animation for 67 years.
After the character was thawed out, high jinks ensued as the vigorous prospector (now seemingly half the age of his own son) navigated the cultural/technological changes he had slept through.
Flash-forward (mumble mumble) decades, and that American institution, the Grand Ole Opry, is on the brink of the milestone the prospector hoped to explore.
Yes, after the big 100th birthday bash on Saturday, November 29, the venerable radio show will sashay into its second century.
"The future of country music starts here," declares an Opry billboard in my hometown, 50 miles south of Nashville.
I fully expect the Opry to thrive for another century, but success will require walking a metaphorical tightrope.
Certainly, the Opry needs to respect its longtime fans and continue providing a showcase for legacy acts who have poured their heart and soul into the show. It's the time-honored principle of "dance with the one that brung ya — even if the dance might generate a broken hip or two."
Admittedly, management needs to watch out for songs like "Varicose Veins of Many Colors," "I Saw the Light (After I Found My Drugstore Reading Glasses)" and "I've Got Friends in Places Six Feet Under," though.
On the other hand, the show can't rest on its hay bales. Younger artists need the freedom to borrow musical elements from other musical genres or other cultures. I just hope they never stray too far away from songwriter Harlan Howard's description of country music as "three chords and the truth." "A bajillion chords and whatever the Spotify algorithm spits out" comes up short in the authenticity department, don't you know?
Seriously, the core values of the Opry don't need to be watered down. ("Thank a vague, inoffensive concept of a Higher Power I'm a country boy!")
The Opry has long been proactive in expanding its "brand," as with the late, lamented Opryland theme park, Opry Mills Mall and the Hallmark movie "A Grand Ole Opry Christmas," which also airs November 29. What marketing innovations lie in the future?
The Opry might develop its own political party ("It's Saturday evening in America"), cannabis edibles ("Afterwards, go get a TRAILER-LOAD of Goo Goos – it's good!") or credit card. Okay, the neighborliness of the Opry family might make it hard for announcers to push the plastic. ("Do y'all really want to run up a big bill buying a new couch? Shoot, my momma's got one that's just going to waste.")
Some folks will always be either indifferent or downright antagonistic to what the Opry represents, but I feel the Opry's stars will keep on entertaining crowds even as mankind REACHES for the stars.
Can't you see the colonists on Mars boot-scooting to "Save A Horse, Use Your Jetpack" or "Try That In A Small Town (With 38% of the Gravity of Earth)"?
TV's "The Second Hundred Years" is just a faint memory for trivia buffs like me, but the Opry promises to provide the warmth that could melt any glacier.
(COMMENT, BELOW)
Controversial author Harlan Ellison once described the work of Mr. Tyree as "wonkily extrapolative" and said his mind "works like a demented cuckoo clock." Tyree generated a particular buzz on the Internet with his column spoofing real-life Christian nudist camps. A lifelong small-town southerner, he graduated from Middle Tennessee State University in 1982 with a bachelor's degree in Mass Communications.
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