No animals were harmed in the writing of this entry.   Although a few humans were ripped apart by armadillos and sold by the side of the road as baskets.

The great Soviet political philosopher, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, thought he had sufficiently assessed the human condition when he wrote, “Every man always has handy a dozen glib little reasons why he is right not to sacrifice himself.” Had Solzhenitsyn met some of my friends, he would see how right he was.

In my formative years, my bags were empty when I sat out to discover the world, and myself.. They were equally void of packed excuses the day I gained my first career, my ex-wife, my days in college, my relations with my parents, my children, my teachers, my co-workers, and the list can go on.

I had long before buried what excuses I may have had for not following whatever was my calling. I embraced so deeply that the road never forked; the adventure was straight and clear. Indeed, by emptying my bag of excuses, the load only lightened. Other people I knew thought they knew me better than I did, but I knew me pretty well.

Sometimes I laugh at the retelling of the day my legend was born. Somewhere around 1966-67, the burdens of college life became so overpowering that I did what most college students do - I took a nap . . . in class. And, as my colleagues poured a lifetime of experience into the day’s lecture, I passed from mere napping to deep, robust slumber; the kind of sleep that relieved my body of its duty to remember that I was seated at a desk and not prone in bed. The crash that followed left students stunned and me in a howling stupor. I learned to laugh a lot. And I learned to laugh at myself a lot since those days.

Following a High School reunion a few years ago, some of my pals, all men in my own state of decay, recalled stories. “There was Wes’s overzealous attempt to gasoline-fortify a campfire, which left him with a comical set of prickly eyebrows and hairless arms.” We laughed at the comedy that was the conversion of my pickup bed into a mobile swimming pool. I’m more amused at how me and my buddies were able to splash around town without drawing the attention of police.

Every day was an adventure in my world. But don’t misunderstand - I’m no oaf. I believe myself to be an imaginative writer, an intelligent debater, and a lover of people. That’s what I would expect most parents would hope for their offspring. I want see it in my own daughters when they find adventure in the routine of everyday life. I want to see it in my friends, those out there in cyber land and those around me in person. I try to traverse the mundane by elevating the importance of those around me. All people matter to me - all colors, religions, backgrounds, creeds and dispositions. I love the beautiful and the ugly alike. The friendly and the cranky both get my attention. I try to befriend the kind and the embittered with the same vigor. They all matter. None are up for vote. None are on the auction block of significance.

The burden that one’s life might end before becoming acquainted with the majesties of the universe is the vivid backdrop to my life. It is a tapestry woven into the fabric of my being. More precisely, it is the water that quenchs my parched thirst. My adventures and my life are indistinguishable. I was me at school, football games, work and home and just knocking around. Who I am is more than a Sunday wardrobe or cultural garb.

It was a choice that became my calling, a calling that became my choice.

I see my friends still looking for who they are, recluseing themselves into tiny capsules of self loathing and tiny closets of self absorbtion by avoidng the real world as it exist, and their own lives as they exist. When I first met me many years ago, on a trip to meet myself and my future. I seemed quiet and a little nervous. That would all change. I did what I ask all my friends, known and unknown to do: ask good questions, probing questions about the world and what it is. Change your thoughts about yourself. I find you quite kind and affable. I liked you all from the beginning, you might even like yourself, if you give yourself a chance.

You cannot fathom then the profound impact that one change might have on your self awareness adventure.

I’m grateful to many. I’m grateful that the student became the teacher, the teacher became the student. You have something to share, share it.

The great Soviet philosopher was close - all men do carry bags. And such baggage packs excuses for most.

Become full of caring, compassion and adventure. Here’s the real tragedy, the nugget that causes me to pause the longest:

Just five minutes alone with yourself and you will find the poor, vicious, misdirected person you think you are and the person you really are….. can become best friends. The two of you will laugh at your quirky charm and be captivated by your honest compassion. Don’t be your own assassin by shortchangeing your own life in ways you probably will never know.
Be glad to spend five more minutes with yourself, laughing with yourself and laughing at yourself.

I started aging rapidly In August 2007 . Until then, I had been aging steadily at the rate of about one year per year, with few exceptions, such as during the party where I drank bourbon straight from Evil Fury’s shoe while standing in the shower. When I woke up on the lawn the next day, I discovered that I had aged nearly a decade.

But after that I felt pretty good until August 2007, when I went in for my annual physical examination. I get an annual physical examination about once every six years. I`m reluctant to do it more often because of the part where the Doctor does a Horrible Thing.

You guys out there know what I mean. Your in the exam room, and the Doctor has been behaving in a non threatening manner, thumping on your chest, frowning into your ears, etc, and the two of you are having a normal conversation about how Jerry Jones should get, a minimum the Electric Chair, and you’re almost enjoying your exam, when, without warning, the Doctor reaches into a drawer and pulls out: THE GLOVE.

Suddenly, you notice the Dr.  looks like Vincent Price, and the room lights are flashing, and the music system which had been playing “Wonderful World,” now is playing the theme from “Jaws.”

This time when I was getting examined, the Doctor brought in for training purposes, his new nurses aide, who happened to be a member of the extreme opposite sex. They were back there chatting like they were on a tour boat, and all I wanted to do was find a grocery sack to put over my head until I could get a new identity through the Federal Witness Protection Program.

But I did get through the Glove, OK. In fact I was feeling good, ready to schedule my next appointment for late 2027 and sprint for the door, when the Doctor looked at my cardiogram and made a “hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm` noise that Doctors are taught in medical school so they  don`t have to come right out and say “Uh oh.”   “You have an abnormal cardiogram,” He said.

He said a lot stuff after that, but missed most of it because I was looking around the room for a good place to faint. I do remember him gesturing at a diagram of the human heart and talking about a condition called “branch bundle blockage” (or maybe he said bundle branch blockage)  which is caused by the heart valves being connected improperly to the distributor or something like that. I wasn`t really following him. He also mentioned something about more test.  Which is doctorize talk for his mistress needs a new Porsche.

“Fine,” I said, trying to appear composed, which was difficult to do because by that point I was lying face down on the floor.

So by now you know it all resulted in open heart surgery and I`m feeling old. I`m experiencing every one of the 147 Major Warning Signs Of Heart Trouble, including chest pains, shortness of breath, tendency to not notice the traffic light has changed, and Fear of ordering French fries. Also my heart has taken to beating very loud, especially late at night.

Perhaps you have heard it.

Like a childhood accordion collapsing, all the air  went out of me. I admit to mostly feeling a sense of relief as as I walked out of the trendy bar on West 6th Street.  The waitress inside had left me enough red flags that my inflated ego understood a wagon full of no’s.  My efforts were rather disappointing and the crackling and hissing noises grew louder and my life began resembling the smoking car of a train through the City of New Orleans.  Perhaps with the right amount of Wes personality she might melt, but I wasn’t going to stick around for that particular chemistry class, there were no one else’s notes I could borrow.

At my age you have to get your kicks where you can. I had my dinosaur foreskin cowboy boots on and she had her cowboy hat. She had been playing tricks on me and my bruised ego decided it had had enough.

It didn’t take Huey Long long  to build a bridge outside Baton Rouge and it didn’t take me long to collect my self esteem and leave.  In no time at all I was out on the windswept, frozen corner of Desolation Row and Nightmare Alley looking for clear reception to call Miss Amarillo 1969.  It was a close call, but I made it.  All I had to do now was wait around and try to blend in with the rotten woodwork and terrifying twilight of cosmic confusion and posttraumatic stress of going down in flames of a near female encounter.

By the time Miss Amarillo’s 1965 cherry red Mustang appeared I was half frozen spinning ghost half heartedly hoping that among the ruins of the vacant buildings I’d run into Jesus.  Hell, I thought, any Jesus.

Miss Amarillo leaned across the front seat and held the door open for me. I got in, slightly feverish and still shaking from the cold, and gave her a hug.   She pulled away from the curb and headed off to heaven.

“So what took you so long?” she said.

A long time ago, a man called Uncle Sam pointed a finger at me and said, “The country needs you.”

One day a man with stars on his lapel pointed at a group of young men and said, “You are important people.” And indeed, time has proven the wisdom of his words. I maintain, as that General did, that the American Soldier is a shining example of what is good in the world.

Little did I realize in 1967, as I drank coffee at the at The Double Dip on Polk Street in Amarillo, that I would contemplate joining the US Army and LBJ`s dream team, and one day be avoiding mortars in some far away lands rice paddies. At the time I was in College, I was lead guitar player and vocalist in my own rock and roll band. I was majoring in Spades, which I played every morning in the student union building, I wasn`t sure what a major in Spades would do for me in my future pursuits in life but at the time my other concern was becoming the first male cheerleader at West Texas State University. It was my last resort at finding some way to get my hands between the legs of a nubile young lady, all my previous attempts had been less than successful and I was becoming quite frustrated. I figured if failed at cracking an all female cheer squad then I`d just join the Army. So that`s how I wound up in the US Army in case anyone wanted to know.

I soon found myself at Fort Polk LA. A hot, mosquito infested hell. I enlisted on the Buddy Plan and on our first weekend from base Bill promptly ran onto the dance floor at a canjun dance and bit a young lady on the buttocks. Since those were the good ole days before political correctness, Bill was not sent home, though he was confined to camp for the next eight weeks. He now has a distinguished place on a marble wall in Washington DC and another on a wall at Amarillo`s War Memorial.

I did not fare as well as my friend Bill. I spent several months when I came home being interrogated by a pipe smoking psychologist who felt I might not be fully committed to the Army. I have said this before, I wanted to travel the country like a rambling hunchback and sing Bob Dylan songs at truck stops. I knew the truck drivers would enjoy my behavior only marginally more than the Army psychologist.

Yet I had not abandoned my dream, I went back to WTSU and opened my own little hangout called Stanyon Street, and instead of singing Bob Dylan songs at truck stops I sang them across the street from ultra conservative WT. That is until the City and the campus authorities teamed up to close us down. THEY MIGHT BE SUBVERSIVES. My friends hailed me as their golden boy, and a female cheerleader kissed me. And once again I had avoided the fate of my friend Bill, of being airlifted from a battle field.

Instead of protesting the war by trying to subvert the men in women in uniform. I protested my governments way of conducting the “war.” My fellow vets considered me a man, and even more important, they considered me a friend.

I`m well aware that most people like a gentle person. But I also feel that people respect another person that stands up for what he or she feels is right.

A few short years and all that was behind me, or at least I had tried to put it all behind me. But somewhere outside a little village there is a little piece of my heart, I left it there many years ago and many miles away.

I remember that coffee colored muddy river, it seems to flow out of a childhood dream, peaceful and familiar, sluggishly flowing beneath the stars and moon and hot jungle sun, then erupting into sounds that deafen your ears, blinds your eyes and takes away your youth forever.

In my hand was a black and white photograph of a young girl holding her father’s hand. That girl in the grown up version was with me in thought recently, I believe she loved me as much now as she did in the photograph. She is not little anymore, little girls grow up, so do their Dads ….sometime. I thought what a shame she could not remain that little girl in the black and white photograph, holding her fathers hand.

Time stands still in black and white, in real life it never does. Maybe life is cruel that way, when you think about it. Most of us don’t think at all at the time we do stupid things that hurts little girls and then we spend the rest of our lives looking for forgiveness.

So here my daughter and I were. I doubted alive people seemed willing to understand or accept what I am trying to say. The dead seem more inclined. The living ,God Bless ‘em just wouldn’t try, it seemed.

Thinking I was still alive. I hadn’t yet road the elevator to that penthouse of truth. But, I plan to someday, I thought with an odd feeling of somberness that then I would know how that little girl in the black and white photograph feels.

Three years ago yesterday I smoked my last cigarette. That may be because I had a heart attack that resulted in me requiring six bypasses.

Man cannot live by chicken fried steak alone.

There are many sobering events in life and one of them is giving up the food you love so much because of a silly little old thing like bypass surgery.

All of us are death bound of course, but some of us seem to ride a faster train.  Many of the most charmed laden individuals appear to luxiate lfe in a fashion as to draw me to them like a moth to the ragged flame of friendship and love.

The most important and charasmatic people in my life have prematurely gone to Jesus. The list begins with a younger brother  who drown when I was five and he was three, it continues with Miss Amarillo 1969, by friend Bill who was killed in Nam, and both my parents.

All of them visited me at my bedside one morning three years ago.

I don’t remember why.  Maybe it was the dead telling the living its alright.

They say the truth can set you free. It can also break your heart.  For in the sky of every friendship, relationship or loved one, are little thickets of loss falling like confetti from the stars. You never see them at first. You only feel it after they are gone.

I’ve been gone a week so this subject has been covered I’m sure. But can anyone explain to me why you can build a mosque two blocks from ground zero but you cannot erect a cross in memory of fallen troopers in Utah?

What are we coming to?

Sixth Street is actually 6th Avenue but the natives refer to it as 6th street.  The City rerouted Old Route 66 through Amarillo twice, The Oldest Route was called the Business Route or down Sixth Street to where it joined Old Route 66 or Amarillo Bld on the Western edge of town at the time . Amarillo Blvd was the primary Route of 66 through the Northern Part of Amarillo.  I-40 dissected the mid part of Amarillo just South of downtown in the late 60’s. Effectively ending Route 66 and ending an era.

The Nat Ballroom

One of several old gas stations that have been converted

About one block from where I live

Cadillac ranch

Polk Street- Main Street anywhere else

The Big Texan Steak Ranch

The Big Texan Steak house Motel

Th

Mexican Restaurant on 6th

Amarillo is the headquarters for the American Quarter Horse Association, these painted horses are all over town each unique to the business that has one

I will post more next weekend