I was listening to a radio show (Bob Dylan’s theme time radio hour) and heard this awful tale of crazy alcoholic behavior. I am paraphrasing but essentially…..
Delta Blues legend Tommy Johnson was not only a great musician but was also a bad drunk. He was known to drink “sterno and also shoe polish strained through..bread” when he did not have any whiskey.
I never drank sterno but do know people who have. Shoe polish is a new one to me. Yet as crazy as it sounds I guess it is possible. If it works – that is it contains some alcohol and it produces the effect we are after – some alcoholic, somewhere, at some time, will use it. Especially if we have no other supply of booze.
In the southern U.S. bible belt region there are still dry counties and plenty of restrictions on how and when alcohol can be sold. Local laws protecting the good folk from the evils of alcohol were even more widespread in the past. If you lived somewhere in the south where alcohol could not be sold or you traveled around, say playing music, getting your hands on some alcohol often must have been like trying to get illegal drugs is today. And I thought I had it bad when I couldn’t buy liquor on Sunday.
It is never easy being a drunk. It must be doubly awful to need to drink and be in such a mentally twisted state (and probably so damn broke) that your options come down to things like sterno, kerosene, or shoe polish. There are plenty of health problems and deaths occurring in some places today, like Russia, that are connected to people regularly imbibing bad booze or alcohol products that were never meant for human consumption.
The few people I know who drank sterno said it was awful going down and had some nasty side effects (the human body breaks down the methanol in sterno into formalydahyde and formic acid). Sterno can even make you go blind or outright kill you. I can’t imagine shoe polish, strained or not, would be much better for you.
Tommy Johson would supposedly talk about, and be seen publicly practicing, his nastier drinking habitats. The downside of using industrial products to satisfy his alcoholic craving was ironically the subject of one of Johnson’s more famous songs – “Canned Heat Blues.” Part of this title was also the inspiration for the name of the blues band Canned Heat.
Canned Heat Blues
by Tommy “Snake” Johnson
recording of December 1929, Crafton, Wisconsin
from Complete Recorded Works (1928-1929)
Crying,canned heat, canned heat, mama, crying, sure, Lord, killing me
Crying, canned heat, mama, sure, Lord, killing me
Takes alcorub to take these canned heat blues
Crying, mama, mama, mama, you know, canned heat killing me
Crying, mama, mama, mama, crying, canned heat is killing me
Canned heat don’t kill me, crying, babe, I’ll never die
I woked up, up this morning, with canned heat on my mind
Woked up this morning, canned heat was on my mind
Woke up this morning, with canned heat, Lord, on my mind
Crying, Lord, Lord, I wonder, canned heat, Lord, killing me
Jake alcohol’s [ruined me, churning] ’bout my soul
Because brownskin women don’t do the easy roll
I woke up, up this morning, crying, canned heat ’round my bed
Run here, somebody, take these canned heat blues
Run here, somebody, and take these canned heat blues
Crying, mama, mama, mama, crying, canned heat killing me
B’lieve to my soul, Lord, it gonna kill me dead.
I have been told time and time again that my drinking experiences include those horrible things I have already done and those things I just haven’t done yet. When drinking, anything is possible for me. Since I do not want to end up with the Canned Heat Blues…….I think it might be a good idea for me to try to keep following the straight and narrow path I’m on. Trust God, clean house, and help others.
All the best in sobriety,
AA Blogger