{"id":6833,"date":"2016-01-27T07:00:23","date_gmt":"2016-01-27T13:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/?p=6833"},"modified":"2016-01-27T12:42:39","modified_gmt":"2016-01-27T18:42:39","slug":"a-walk-down-memory-lane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/2016\/01\/27\/a-walk-down-memory-lane\/","title":{"rendered":"A Walk Down Memory Lane"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"521930_10150957257552900_1093586020_n\"<\/a><\/p>\n

To me, a community is made up of two main components. First, the place you feel the most at home. That place for me is my hometown, Friendswood, TX, where everyone knows everyone and I know I can completely be myself there. Second, a community consists of the people that make you feel the most at home even if you are not there. The adorably clich\u00e9 quote, \u201chome is wherever I\u2019m with you\u201d is pretty much on point when it comes to describing who those people are. \u201cMy people,\u201d are the group of girl friends that I started elementary school with, experienced the most awkward of life phases with, and celebrated with after walking across the stage on graduation day in a tragic royal\u00a0blue cap and gown. Fast forward almost 4 whole years and I would still say that even after distance separated our friendships, my \u201cFriendswood friends\u201d will always be my most important community.<\/p>\n

With a group of friends that are as close knit as mine are, we all obviously have a lot of characteristics in common, but we are all very different and quirky in our own ways. We tend to have our own styles, have different hobbies, definitely different tastes in guys, and an extremely broad range of \u201cfavorite\u201d genres. From jamming The Red Hot Chili Peppers to Queen Beyonc\u00e9, we would all overwhelmingly agree that country\u00a0music brings out this uniting factor among us that other music just can\u2019t do.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t really come up with one aspect of country music that connected us, but man did we make a ton of memories through loving the country genre (or love daydreaming about George Strait).\u00a0Maybe it was the cowboy boots, cutoff blue jean shorts (that wereprobably extremely inappropriate looking back on it), or the \u201cred-dirt\u201d Texas country concerts we couldn\u2019t miss on the weekends. Whatever it was that made country music consume our lives created an extremely vivid timeline of events that never fails to keep my people literally stuck like glue<\/a>– thanks Sugarland.<\/p>\n

\"34265_401679317899_5778759_n\"It seems generic to say that a song can bring back 1000 memories almost instantly, but that\u2019s exactly what happens when I shuffle through an old playlist and come across songs that just hit home and bring a flood of emotions pouring over me. Growing up two-stepping at Garner State Park is such a great example of how country music kept us together as a group of close friends. We always\u00a0went on\u00a0trips to the Frio River to obviously have a blast floating, but we mostly went to enjoy a great Gary Allan album as we were floating and to go dancing with \u2018randoms\u2019 at Garner. That tradition still continues today (maybe without the random guys) and the memories of everyone singing\u00a0\u201cI’ve got lightening in my veins and thunder in my chest\u201d while floating down the river won\u2019t ever be erased!<\/p>\n

Another thing about country music that makes it so important to my friends is the way a single song takes you back in time for 3 short minutes and remember exactly what we were going through, what party we were at, or what stage of life we were in when the song was a hit. To this day, when I hear Check Yes or No<\/a> I think of my junior high boyfriend and how ridiculously \u201cin love\u201d I was at the age of 14. If I come across Red Light<\/a> by David Nail I remember my best friend asking me to replay it over and over again because she was obsessed. When I shuffle through old playlists and come across songs that I would listen to on blast in the car, sun roof open, windows down, screaming at the top of our lungs, I am so thankful to have fallen in love with country music. No other genre kept my friends together over the years like country music did and those memories are irreplaceable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To me, a community is made up of two main components. First, the place you feel the most at home. That place for me is my hometown, Friendswood, TX, where everyone knows everyone and I know I can completely be … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":135,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[96,74,6,18,59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-post-1","category-country-symbols","category-dancing-2","category-texas","category-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/135"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6833"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6833\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6932,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6833\/revisions\/6932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}