Welcome to From Insults to Respect. I hope you all are all having a splendid week, especially you mothers out there for my calendar indicates Mother’s Day is just around the corner.

Regular readers of this blog well know that from time to time I like to utilize aspects of Bob Dylan’s entertaining show, Theme Time Radio Hour, to highlight some important issues regarding the nature of respect (see for examples, HERE, HERE, HERE, and HEAR). Well, it just so happens one of the episodes of his show is on mothers, so let’s see if there are any gold nuggets we can mine.

Bob’s Show On The Theme Of Mothers

You can access Bob’s show for free HERE. He begins by telling us,

Bob getting a kiss from his mom

Today we are going to pay a tribute to that bountiful breast we all sprang from, mother dearest…. A mother is the only person on Earth who can divide her love amongst ten children and each child still has all her love. 

The first song Bob plays is “Momma Don’t Allow It” by Julia Lee. Here are a few of its lyrics:

Now our Momma don’t allow no trumpet playin’ ’round here
Our momma don’t allow no trumpet playin’ ’round here
Papa don’t care what mama don’t allow,
He plays his trumpet any how
Momma don’t allow no trumpet playing in here.

Then we hear some rollicking trumpet playing, followed by another similar verse:

Now my Momma don’t allow no eighty-eight playin’ ’round here
My momma don’t allow no eight-eight playin’ ’round here
I don’t care what momma don’t allow
We’re gonna beat those eighty-eights anyhow
Momma don’t allow no eighty-eight playin’ ’round here. 

The song goes on from here to tell us of other instruments momma don’t allow, but different family members just refuse to listen. The last verse tells us,

Momma don’t allow no good time music here
Momma don’t allow no good time music here
Oh, we don’t care what momma don’t allow
We’re gonna have ourselves a good time anyhow
Momma don’t allow no, one more time, here we go….

This lively, upbeat song doesn’t seem very respectful to the wishes of Julia Lee’s mom. Nevertheless, it did bring up for me this idea that most of us sure can recall a few incidents that occurred during our upbringing when our mother told us not to do something, we disagreed, and we went right ahead and did it anyway. In most situations we still loved and generally respected her, but just couldn’t accept that everything she felt was wrong was wrong.

Here’s one such example from my own life.

My Example

When I was about nine years old, I was playing in the street with a black buddy of mine, Leroy, and after awhile I became thirsty, so I cried out, “Hey, let’s go up to my apartment to get us some drinks.” This was a common thing to do when I was with a friend, but it was the first time I had invited Leroy.

My Mom when I was 9-years old

My Mom greeted us in her usual warm manner, and gave us each a nice glass of milk and some cookies. We scarfed them down, and then hustled back down into the street for more fun. Later, when I returned home for supper, my mom sat me down, and told me, “Leroy is a fine boy, and I have nothing against him, but you shouldn’t bring a colored person into our apartment. What will the neighbors think?”

I had no idea what my mother was talking about because there were black kids in my Brooklyn school, along with Puerto Ricans, Jews, and a variety of others, and we played together, and at least to me, this seemed as natural as an ocean breeze. So I said to my mom, “Leroy, he’s a good guy.” Mom sighed, and said, “The neighbors might not like this.”

I usually obeyed Mom’s request, and I loved and respected her dearly. However, for this request, I ignored it and brought Leroy to our apartment whenever I felt like it. Mom, as she did the first time, always treated Leroy in a friendly manner. Still, I continued to be confused about why she was concerned that the neighbors might not like this.

But then, a few months later, I saw a movie titled, “To Kill a Mockingbird.” It depicted a story of a small town white lawyer, played masterfully by Gregory Peck, who was asked to defend a young black man against a charge of raping a white woman. When he accepts the case, he and his family take a great deal of heat from several white community members. I don’t want to reveal too much of the plot for those who hope to see it one day, but it led me to come to understand why Mom had become concerned. She was just trying, in her own way, to protect her family. Fortunately, my neighbors never gave any indication that they had become upset with what I continued to do.

Back to Bob’s Show

Although sometimes our moms didn’t always give us the most sound advice, sometimes they were right on, as Bob points out by playing us “Mama Didn’t Lie” by Jan Bradley. Here are a few of the lyrics:

Mama didn’t lie, she didn’t lie
Mama didn’t lie, she didn’t lie

Here comes that boy and his friends
Making eyes at me again
Do they all think that I’m a toy?
To be played with by every boy?
Well, they’re wrong to think I
Will be caught by the wink of an eye

My mama didn’t lie
(Mama didn’t lie)
She didn’t lie
Mama didn’t lie
She didn’t lie

The greatest pastime in this man’s world
Is playin’ tricks on every young girl
To have one is how they get their kicks
But not me, because I know their tricks
And they’re wrong to think I
Will be caught by the wink of an eye.

After a few more songs about mothers, Bob tells us that he, “caught up with Penn Jillette of Penn and Teller [the popular magic performers] the other day, and he told me what it’s like to be a momma’s boy.” Here’s what Penn had to say:

There are two ways momma boys turn out. The one way is kinda the accepted nansy pansy way, the whimpsey way. But there is another kinda momma’s boy who had such complete unconditional love from his mother and father that he had the feeling that he was twelve feet tall and bullet proof and that’s what my mom did for me.

My favorite story about my mom about unconditional love is when Penn and Teller opened on Off Broadway. There was this opening tradition in theater that you wait up all night at a party until the New York Times comes out at three or four a.m., and the review is read aloud and that decided whether your show was successful or not. So we waited up and my mother and father was at the party and they were sitting with our producer and they read the review from the New York Times aloud and it was really an unbelievable money review. And, uh, the next day, I had breakfast with my mom and dad, and my mom said, “When they read that review from the New York Times and your producer turned to me and said, “Doesn’t that make you proud?” it made me so sad and uncomfortable because I don’t need the New York Times to tell me to be proud of my son. I was proud of you the instant you were born.”

Man! I just love that story!

Bob’s mom as a young woman

As this show’s episode comes to a close, Bob tells us, “That’s all the time we have today on Theme Time Radio Hour. We’ll see you again next week. In the meantime, go call your mothers.” Sound advice if your mother is still alive. Sadly, my mom passed away several years ago. I sure miss her.

As I thought about Bob’s show, it occurred to me that he didn’t just devote a whole show to mothers, at least two of his great songs featured a mother as a central character.
“Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again” repeatedly includes the following lines:

Oh, Mama
Can this really be the end?
To be stuck inside of Mobile
With the Memphis blues again

Throughout the song we hear of a great deal of dissatisfaction with life in Mobile, and Bob cries out to his mom for solace.

Bob with his mom

In “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding),” Bob tells his ma about a number of disquieting aspects of life but in each of the choruses he seeks to reassure her he will somehow get through this. So, for example, there’s this one:

So don’t fear if you hear
A foreign sound to your ear
It’s alright, Ma, I’m only sighing

And then there is this one:

And though the rules of the road have been lodged
It’s only people’s games that you got to dodge
And it’s alright, Ma, I can make it

And then there is this one:

But though the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing, Ma, to live up to

And then there is this one:

But I mean no harm, nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it’s alright, Ma, if I can’t please him

And finally, there is this one:

And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They’d probably put my head in a guillotine
But it’s alright, Ma, it’s life, and life only

With Bob’s great poetic art, as is true with much of great art, there are no straight forward solutions offered, and yet the imagery provided is pregnant and is accompanied with angst, deep concern, and a process that we go through that at least offers the possibility of the birth of something beautiful.

My Best,
Jeff

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