First, let me get my objection to the song out of the way. The line "He might kneel but he never bends over" taken literally is a bad form of judgement on someone, and using it figuratively isn't any better. One of the things that makes Cooley's songwriting so powerful is how non-judgmental he is, but mabye not so here. On the other hand, it's a distinction I've heard from people I liked and respected. And yet…even this part that I don't like is nicely phrased. Further, if it's taken literally rather than figuratively, it raises the question, "How does the narrator know that much about Bob's sex life?" Is he a little closer to Bob than we first might think? Could be.
Now, the rest of the song. There's good stuff here:
Bob goes to church every Sunday, Every Sunday that the fish ain't biting
Bob never has to have dinner with the preacher,
cause Bob never bothered getting married
He likes to drink a beer or two every now and again,
he always had more dogs than he ever had friends
Bob ain't light in the loafers, he might kneel but he never bends over
Bob takes care of his mama, she's the only one he lets call him Robert
She don't drive anymore so he takes her to the store
and keeps her yard looking just like she wants it
Every week at the beauty shop Bob's mama hears
of another woman made another man disappear
Robert ain't exactly scared of women, he's just got his own way of living
Bob's still got an antenna on a pole
two channels come in, two more come and go
He used to watch the news but he don't anymore,
ain't none of it new it's the same as before
He figures all any of it's any good for is keeping everybody bored
till there ain't nobody like Bob anymore
Bob takes care of his mama
she's a mess but he feels like he oughta
How big a mess today? Ask Bob he'll say,
"She's a big one and she's gonna be a lotta"
He likes to drink a beer or two every now and again,
he always had more dogs than he ever had friends
Bob ain't light in the loafers, he might kneel but he never bends over
I figure everybody knows a Bob. He reminds me of my godfather Earl. So, who is Bob?
Let's start with the first verse. Bob isn't religious in any conventional way. How come? Hard to say. He "never bothered" to get married. For most of us, deciding whether or not to get married is a big deal. With Bob, he just "never bothered". Does that make him gay? Maybe, maybe not. Some people just aren't all that sexual, and Bob could be one of them. He likes beer, and prefers dogs to people.
On to verse two. Bob is Robert to his mama, who he's taking care of--his daddy's dead or gone--and she worries about him being disappeared by a woman. It's probably his mama's thought that "Robert ain't exactly scared of women". I don't know how it is where you're from, but there's a long tradition of Ozarker men who were tongue-tied and shy around women. A fair number of them get married off anyway, mostly because their families help get them fixed up. In Bob's case, mama likes having him around the house, with his "own way of living". It's a good way, for her, and Robert doesn't seem to mind.
He doesn't live there, though. Verse three tells us he has his own place, with "an antenna on a pole". He's quit watching the news, which implies he does watch TV on those two-to-four channels that do come in. The news bores him, though, and more, it's an implicit threat to Bob's way of life. Dig a little deeper--"keeping everybody bored till there ain't nobody like Bob anymore". You could read that as Bob seeing news about gay men coming out of the closet, and the closet being his way of life. What does it mean that it keeps "everybody bored", though? You'd think that might be exciting. Or maybe Bob is smarter than we might think at first, and finds the modern world and the rush of events in it boring. Maybe he just likes his life like it is, and doesn't see anyone like him in the news.
He's smart enough in verse four to know his mama, "she's a mess". But he takes care of her anyway, saying, "She's a big one and she's gonna be a lotta". Lotta what? He don't say. Is he a little slow? Or is he just letting whoever asks fill in their own blanks on purpose? There's the one place in the song where I see Cooley in Bob--Cooley leaves us that sort of space in his songs to fit them to our own imagination. We come back around to the ending of the first verse--another Cooleyism in the songwriting style. We're back to beer and dogs and not that many friends, and "Bob ain't light in the loafers, he might kneel but he never bends over".
I still don't like that one figure of speech, but I like Bob--both the man and the song--a lot better than I did when I started thinking through it. I've known, or known of, a few Bobs. Old-fashioned, duty-bound, quiet and shy. Maybe a little too fond of their mamas. More than that, well, it's hard to know a Bob well enough to say.
