13.

“What Do You Do?” She Asked

Besides drinking?

Read…hum…scribble…

watch walking ferns just

to see where they’re going …

Not necessarily in that order.

Listen to sports talk maybe 10 hours in a

normal day and Outlaw Ray-dee-o the rest

of the time…which is where I heard the

part in Billy Joe Shaver’s “When I Get

My Wings” about “Ain’t a chain that can

hold me…gonna die with my boots on…

gonna go out in style with a freewheeling

feeling and a honky-tonk smile…when I

get my wings I’m gonna fly-fly-fly-fly

away singing and reach a new heaven

higher than high” or something like that

and thought to myself “Hell-fire if

Billy Joe’s gonna sprout wings and

fly away singing over the pearly gates

into heaven like the great speckled bird

why my celestial report card is at least

as good as his…if not better…so

there’s hope for almost anybody

if it wasn’t something Billy Joe

just made up to sing at the

New Lazarus Bar & Grill.

Ran a ruby mine on upper Cowee

six weeks then ran out of red glass.

Last count I’d got up 129 gallons

of moon glow…a civic responsibility.

Drove the dream-mo-bile over the

Smokies from seventy-eight ’til eighty-five.

Since then been keeping a low profile

like Nixon advised. Some day

whether I set my mind to it or not

I’ll get to do pure nothing.

How ’bout yourself?