CHAPEL HILL —
More than sixty years ago, on a small piece of land nestled along the outskirts of rural Franklin, a little boy picked cotton until his fingers bled.
“Those was rough days,” Dave Bullock said, looking down at his hands as he massaged his palms. “You can’t explain it to people who never done it, neither.”
But the physical strain of working in the fields was not the only downside of growing up the son of a sharecropper.
“The school kids, they’d laugh and holler at me as they went on by,” he said. “Made me feel real bad.”
He had no idea that their taunts would result in a gift from his grandfather — a seemingly simple gesture that, in many ways, helped him write a personal philosophy he would carry with him more than a half-century later.
“He told me, ‘Son. I’m gonna show you how to play the guitar. It’ll put some joy in your soul. After that, them kids won’t be laughin’ no more. And if they do, you won’t pay ’em no mind.’”
•
Bullock leans down and unzips the soft black case propped up against one of the few vacant storefronts located on Franklin Street — a legendary strip of road that cuts through the heart of the University of North Carolina’s campus.
He rubs his hands again before taking a weathered guitar by the neck and sliding its strap across his chest.
“I can’t play for as long as I used to. Hurts my hands,” he says. “But let me tell you. Arthritis can slow a man down, but if he’s got the music in him, it can’t never stop him.”
He loosens the strings and mutters a quick prayer.
And then, with eyes closed, he begins strumming.
It was a tune familiar to a passerby.
“Sing it, man,” the young woman shouted.
A smile creeps across Bullock’s face and he nods his head.
“Sitting in the morning sun. I’ll be sitting when the evenin’ comes. Watching the ships roll in. Then I watch ’em roll away again. I’m sittin’ on the dock of the bay. Watchin’ the tide roll away. I’m sittin’ on the dock of the bay. Wastin’ time.”
•
A few minutes later, the concert has ended and Bullock places his guitar back into its case.
“I think that’s about all this old man can handle for today,” he says. “But I’ll be back again — Lord willing.”
He doesn’t show up along Franklin Street three days a week to make a living — but admits that, like other street musicians, he “would never turn down a tip from a fan.”
After all these years, a paycheck is not the kind of validation the 67-year-old is after.
“I’ve found that I don’t really need all that much. I get a little check every month to help me get by, but to tell you the truth, I use most of that to help out my family where I can,” Bullock said. “What I do out here, the music, it’s the spirit inside me. It’s somethin’ that has always showed me I had a better day waitin’ for me. Everybody has a better day waitin’ for ’em. Maybe hearin’ this old man will remind ’em of that. Music is love. And, Lord willing, I’m gonna keep spreadin’ that love.”
Dude, that was an awesome tale, would love to meet Dave someday.