I watched a bit of the Country Music Awards (CMA) show on TV the other night. I didn’t even know a lot of the people, but I found it interesting anyway. It occurred to me we use the word country a lot — and in a lot of different places and ways. Last weekend I was watching a football game and a pass was tipped way up in the air and finally almost intercepted. The announcer said, “boy that ball stayed up for a country minute and should have been intercepted.” I had never heard that term, “country minute,” before… I’ve heard of a “New York minute” and have never been sure what that meant exactly. I assume that it refers to the fast pace of New York and maybe even the minutes go by faster, or at least seem like it.
Anyhow, I got to thinking about how often we use the word country in our conversations. I’ve heard country used in politics a lot lately. Politicians talk about uniting the country, or tearing the country apart, or what’s good (or bad) for the country. I’ve heard terms like Mother country, it’s a free country, God’s country, the old country, big country and Southwest Airlines (I think) even has a slogan that says you are now free to move about the country.
Of course, country is where I grew up — if you didn’t live in the city, you lived in the country. I grew up hearing the term country cousin. Again I’m not sure what it meant, but I think it referred to the fact that “country” people tend to be more friendly and treat everyone more like family than just acquaintances.
But we really use the word a lot in our daily lives…we have country stores, country dancing, country codes, some people have a country house, I grew up in Indian country and there’s a type of music called bluegrass country. Some people are members of a country club and in and around Maysville, we had a country doctor. In high school we ran “cross country,” and often listened to country music. Some of the more sophisticated men where I grew up were known as country gentlemen and most of the roads around Maysville were country roads.
There is an old patriotic song from the 1940s titled, “This is My Country.” We should all be grateful that this is our country — it beats any other place…. by a country mile.
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