‘Chatsworth don’t rhyme with nothing.’ : Ballad of Red River Dave

The Original Red River Dave, which is what he calls himself, found a small patch of space amid the amazing clutter of his two-room apartment, strummed his guitar and smiled. He was resplendent in gold-sprayed cowboy boots, flowered shirt, gold lame shoestring tie, jeans and a pristine-clean 10-gallon hat.

With white beard and long hair supplementing the sartorial glitter, he looked a little like Buffalo Bill playing West Hollywood.

But this wasn’t West Hollywood. It was North Hollywood, and Old Original was tunin’ up to sing me a song he’d written about (you ready for this?) Chatsworth. A modest example of the lyrics: Sacramento’s going to lose the Cap ‘ tol soon, when they move it ‘neath the dreamy Chatsworth moon. More later, buckaroo. In the key of C.

I put Dave up to this. Reseda’s been getting a lot of press lately with its new tune, and I figured it was about time someone did something for Chatsworth, the home of hard-working, God-loving people who pay their taxes, hate the devil and don’t snort things up their noses.

They stay home nights and raise clean children and small dogs and would rather die than let their teen-agers play Boy George records. A wild time in Chatsworth is dinner at the Sizzler and Punky Brewster on television.

So I asked Red River Dave to write a song.

“Where’s Chatsworth?” he wanted to know when I first broached him on the subject.

I pointed to it on a map.

“What in hell they need a song for?”

“Well,” I said, “they don’t need a song, but I thought it might be nice if they had a song. Kind of a put-on, you know?”

I suggested he might call it the Chatsworth National Anthem and include something about Chatsworth International Airport, the Chatsworth Club Med and how maybe Chatsworth remained neutral during World War II.

“They did?” old Red River said, sort of surprised.

“Well, not really,” I explained. “It’s all a joke. You’re going to be, you know, exaggerating a little bit.”

“Chatsworth don’t rhyme with nothing,” he said.

I’ve known the old cowboy for a lot of years. His real name is Dave McEnery. He’s 70 and has written about 12,000 of what he calls event songs. Anything tied to the news.

For instance, a tune about Cabbage Patch dolls when they were all the rage: Perkle diddle diddle dum, tweet, tweet, tweet. Natural-lookin’ navel and little cloth feet.

His big hit around Christmas time was “The Night Ronald Reagan Rode With Santa Claus”: We’re proud of you, Ronnie, you’re on the right track. Now what’s in your saddle bag, what’s in your pack?

Things like that.

“I don’t have much time to write songs anymore,” Old Original said. “I’ve had a couple of speaking parts in movies, you know.”

I hadn’t known. One of them was “Pee Wee’s Big Adventure” and the other was “Summer Jobs.” In Pee Wee he got to say, “Come on, I’ll take you with me.” In Summer it was, “Hey, where you goin’ there?”

He showed me a check for $379 from a studio. “Who knows?” he said. “I might even end up makin’ a living one of these days.”

Dave’s apartment looks like a Gulf town after a hurricane. He owns 10 guitars, 19 fiddles, eight banjos and assorted mandolins. They, their cases, music, records, cowboy lamps, potted plants and stacks of oil paintings (his latest hobby) allow for only a narrow pathway through the living room. A table is piled two feet high with sheet music, clippings and press releases.

“I’m just too busy to clean up,” he explained.

Dave got started singing on a radio station in San Antonio in a kind of flat-twang, pop-cowboy, semi-bluegrass style. He was born in Texas. His first big hit was “Amelia Earhart’s Last Flight.” A ship out o’er the o-cean, just a speck a-gainst the sky . . . .

He went on from there to “The Night Ronald Reagan Rode with Santa Claus.”

“What about Chatsworth?” I asked.

The Original Red River thought about it for a moment, then sang: With a sun that never sets upon your home / And no smog to make the bitter tear drops fall / You and yours will live like kings upon a throne / Greater Chatsworth is the answer to it all.

He nodded thoughtfully, thinking. His gold-sprayed boots glimmered in a sliver of sunlight that filtered through a window.

“Maybe,” he finally said, “I’ll think about this a little bit. Where’d you say Chatsworth was again?”

“To be honest, Dave,” I said, “there is no real Chatsworth. Chatsworth is a state of mind, every man’s dream, a Shangri-La.”

“Where’s Shangri-La?” he wondered.

“Near Van Nuys.”

“Oh.”

When I left, Old Original was wondering what might rhyme with Van Nuys. Good buys? Hot eyes? White lies? The possibilities were endless.

I think he’s given up on Chatsworth. It may be the only place in the county that don’t rhyme with nothing.