The Highway Never Ends

          Growing up I was a little country at heart. Meat and potatoes gal, I’ve ridden horses, bulls, done rodeos, live hard and attempted more than a few times to chance fate. I have drank way too much with the wrong crowd, got into fistfights, had too many cars that never worked, and I have stretched the truth a time or two.

            A color character you might say, depending on which end of the mess you were on when I was growing up. I didn’t know then that some of the things I did might have been on the bit of unsavory side. I am sure that the statue of limitations has run out on most of the things that I have done, but I am still a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs when it comes to cops, lawyers and judges. Let’s call it a healthy respect and distance.

Nowadays, I am still a little country at heart but I like the Pogues, Haggard, Howard Jones and even Dead Can Dance. I eat meat and potatoes still, yet Thai food and Sushi happen too. I appreciate a good opera, I can create an app, I am slightly educated and I can now artfully hold my liquor and my tongue at the same time. I avoid fistfights for the most part now, believe in the “You get one strike before I am going to clean your clock” method and well, still having the same problem with the cars. As for the truth, honesty is the best policy. Time and wisdom has its advantages, they say.

            So why tell you all this? I am pretty strong person. I do say person because that is what I am. A whole human being, always will be. Rarely anything stops me in my tracks with “I can’t believe this is happening” jaw drop moment and that just happened.

            Let’s backtrack for a moment. I wasn’t a rebel, home life was hell and I escaped it every chance I got as a teenager. I was a teen that wasn’t a teen. There was a summer that I enhanced my age and got myself and a friend, Killer, summer jobs. Very awesome cool summer jobs! We were hired to sell T-shirts, before and after Willie Nelson concerts. Oh we thought we were kings!! Traveling and helping set-up – we knew all the songs, we loved it – and two young girls could up sell those shirts and hats and everything. Now I don’t want anybody doing this and I certainly don’t recommend “enhancing” your age, this was a different time and different place and it was stupid then too. But we travelled with the Willie Nelson band for 18 cities over one month and a half or so in mostly western states. We met Willie a few times, swapped tasteless jokes with the crew, sold tons of swag and got sunburn in places left unmentioned. I remember the night I got see all the signatures on Willie’s guitar. I was looking for one, Gene Autry’s.  Never found it but I was in awe that is there amongst the many. Now Willie is a hero but Gene Autry was king in my books (still is.) It was a great summer that ended when the VW bug died; we had to sell it for bus fares home thus ending our careers as future roadies. We sat for hours outside a truck stop by a long stretch of highway waiting for a Greyhound bus. There are a few pics from a film camera of the trip, mostly blurry and dog-eared. I laugh now in retrospect that when I arrived home, I got immediately in trouble for dragging dirt in on my shoes and not being a runaway for one month and change. But that was that experience and that was home life.

            For a few times, Killer and I always made plans to see Willie when he was within 200 miles of us after that summer. And we always did until a drunk driver smashed his car into us on one of our adventures, killing my friend.  Within minutes on a long stretch of highway, she died as I tried to convince her to keep breathing while sobbing. It took forever to deal with the emotional pain of losing Killer, four surgeries and pins to fix the physical injuries to me from that day. We have just switched drivers not more than 8 miles before. It could have been me dead was something I dealt with for a long time. It was hard to listen to Willie after that for it was always memories of Killer. We had made plans to drive toTexasto his Fourth of July picnic that year, we never made it together.

            Fast forward to 2009,Tama,Iowa– I decided to take the love of my life to a Willie Nelson concert. It was a nice evening on an Indian reservation and the music & memories flowed. I thought often about Killer, our days as future roadies and the long stretch of highway. I even purchase a CD, laughing at the fact, it was pretty young girls selling stuff. Zip another year forward to 2010, I find myself in Texas, less than twenty minutes away from The Backyard and the Willie Nelson Fourth of July Picnic. I wrestled with it, I didn’t want to dishonor Killer’s memory – something that we were supposed to do together. I decided that Killer being Killer would understand, I found an old Tasmanian Devil with angel wings pin that she had given me and wore it to the all-day picnic. Only punched one person (a drunk guy that wandered into the women’s restroom), drank a lot (of water!) and had a good time getting sunburned in places that are best left unmentioned. The drive home was on a long stretch of highway once again.

            What could possible be a “I can’t believe this is happening” jaw drop moment from that? It is the text I received moments ago. It is Frog asking me if I am interested in volunteering at the First Annual Willie Nelson’s Golf  Tournament on a Saturday. It is helping four different charities in Texas and Frog knows I’m doing Moving Difference; he needs some help and wondering if I am interested. Frog doesn’t have a clue or know what you know from above, he just thought Hey I will ask her to come and help. Now it would be a drive for me, across a long stretch of highway. I can’t say no and I can’t say yes, I say maybe, need to think about it as I am stunned.  As I stare at the text with my jaw agape, I am reminded of a tune from Willie called The Highway from his A Horse Called Music album written by Tom Conner & Richard Wesley. It has perfectly haunting lyric in it with no truer words sung.

– “I’ve heard it all before and I’ll heard it all again, and I’ve heard it say the highway never ends.”