Today’s SOTD is my fourth Random Weekend selection from Carrie Underwood’s 2005 debut, Some Hearts, and the second in the last three months. If it weren’t for Random Weekends, I would never hear a note from this album.
‘I Ain’t in Checotah Anymore’ is the record’s final track and the only one co-written by Underwood. It contrasts her new life of fame and fortune with her modest upbringings in the small town of Checotah, Oklahoma.
The song starts out a little sleepy, but picks up in the second verse and gets more interesting as it goes. I particularly like the fiddle introduced after the bridge.
Maybe after another few hundred Random Weekends I’ll hear the rest of this album.
Where sixty-nine meets forty
There’s a single stop light town
And back when I was really young
A part of that burned down
On any given Friday night
We’d drive a hundred miles
Between the Sonic and the grocery store
Laughing all the while
With as many friends as I could pack, in my daddy’s Ford
But I ain’t in Checotah anymore
[Verse 2]
My hotel in Manhattan
Holds more people than our town
And what I just paid for dinner
Would be a down payment on a house
I’d rather be tipping cows in Tulsa
Than hailing cabs here in New York
But I ain’t in Checotah anymore
[Chorus]
I’m in a world so wide
It makes me feel small sometimes
I miss the big blue skies
The Oklahoma kind
[Verse 3]
In a world of long red carpets
The bright lights of Hollywood
All the paparazzi flashing
Could make a girl feel pretty good
You can get anything you want here
Except a Walmart store
But I ain’t in Checotah anymore
[Chorus]
I’m in a world so wide
It makes me feel small sometimes
I miss the big blue skies
The Oklahoma kind
[Bridge]
Where the Wildcats beat the Ironheads
Old Settler’s day and the OkraFest
After prom, down at the bowling lanes
Catching crappie fish in Eufaula Lake
I ain’t in Checotah anymore
[Chorus]
Oh yeah
I’m in a world so wide
It makes me feel small sometimes
I miss the big blue skies
The Oklahoma kind
But I ain’t in Checotah
No, I ain’t in Checotah
Oh, there’s nothing like Oklahoma
[Outro]
Where sixty-nine meets forty
There’s a single stoplight town
Meet Me In Montauk 
I wish I had known about Checotah when we were in Oklahoma! I would have gotten off I-40 to check out. Instead, I’ll have to settle for this lovely homage and the town’s Wikipedia page, which offers some interesting history, including this:
Between 1907 and 1909, the people of Checotah were involved in a dispute with nearby Eufaula known as the McIntosh County Seat War. After Checotah was designated as the new county seat, the people of Eufaula refused to hand over the county records. Soon after, a group of heavily armed men from Chectotah attempted to seize the records from the courthouse in Eufaula, but were beaten back and forced to surrender during the gunfight that followed. Eufaula was designated as the permanent seat of McIntosh County one year later