Power Outage

With a startlingly loud popping sound, the power went out. No radio nor television, no internet nor telephone, and no air conditioning. I adjusted quickly enough, opening a book and settling into my chair, sipping from a glass of cool water. The faintest of breezes wafted through the back door and softly brushed my skin as it made its way through the room and out into the front yard. I had experienced this before: the quiet stillness of old houses in old days in small West Texas towns. I closed my eyes and let myself be carried away to other times and places. I was a boy in Seagraves. I was young man spending a summer day in the isolation that is Valentine. I was a 19th-century El Pasoan in the days of adobe houses on the lush banks of the mighty Rio Grande. Long ago faces appeared to me, and voices long silent spoke again. All was normal. All was as it should be. I relished every slowly creeping moment. Then the electricity came back on...

Zoomer Roberts
28 June 2016

On Turning 65

It's hard to believe I'm 65 years old, but I'm "every damn day of it," as Daddy used to say.  My siblings didn't live this long. I sang at their funerals. The doctors said I would die at the age of 40. I didn't. For years, I did some trashy living that would have done me in if I had kept it up. But instead I got married, got religion, cleaned up, got rid of some baggage, and set to mending a calloused heart and an imbalanced brain. When my musical career collapsed, I built a new one, guided by the words of Carl Perkins: "It's not what you lose in life. It's what you've got left, and what you do with it." I have a big family of cousins and in-laws, a church family I treasure, friendships that have lasted decades, and some residual respect in the music community. Monica and I have dodged and danced around the land mines of life and managed to stay on our feet. We've picked up some shrapnel, of course -- life is full of shrapnel -- but we've got each other, our own roof, food on the table, and two nickels to rub together. We're on our fifth dog and we still laugh. Thank you, Lord, for all the sunrises.

14 June 2016