I hate taxes and paperwork the way a fourth-grader hates
homework. It is agony to me. It is damn near painful. In fact, if you said I could
get out of ever doing any kind of paperwork ever again if I would just agree to
drive spikes on a new rail system, I believe you would be calling me John Henry
in no time. And, like John Henry, there would soon be a death and then a
legend. And, as with Henry, there would be so many legends that you would never
know the truth about what happened to me as a result of hating paperwork. The
legend of Mark Coker would serve as a lesson for young people who want to get
out of paperwork. Grownups would assume that if they told the story of Mark Coker,
and how he died an untimely death because of his reluctance to take paper and
ink in hand, they’d be more apt to follow through with their paperwork and
finish clerical and contractual jobs. Ah, but anyone who hates paperwork as
much as me would not be swayed by any such warnings. They’d follow me to their
own early graves just so they too could get out of paperwork.
Look, it is a lot like cleaning windows or painting walls in
a stranger’s home. You know they won’t be happy so why do it?
I remember Joshua Burkett, who now tours and plays guitar
for one Sam Hunt. When he was but a little boy, I dated his mother, Karen. He
hated paperwork so much that it was obvious agony whenever asked to do his
homework. You could tell that his his pain was as real any
pain endured by any measure of torture. Josh would hurt less when he crashed his
bike and landed on the concrete driveway. Homework was horrifying to him. I get
it. But when Josh got a guitar, he had no problem figuring out how to chord a
minor or a seventh. He learned how to bar-chord and play lead. His timing
improved with much practice and he finally found himself onstage with some of
the south’s finest musicians.
I’ll tell you why John Henry wanted to go against that
steam-driller in the first place: they brought the shiny, new machine to the
tunnel there in Virginia and asked him to look carefully at the instructions
which were printed on several pages. Like me, John Henry looked at the
instructions and then he looked at his hammer and said, “Screw it! Give me my
hammer.”
