The Life I've Picked by John McEuen

Author:John McEuen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Published: 2018-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

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The bus had its comforts, but flying offers the chance to meet people, and plane people tend to talk about any and everything. Most of those chats would be forgotten as soon as the plane landed, but you never know when one of them might turn into something more. That happened with one woman I met at thirty-five thousand feet. Our paths crossed unexpectedly, and our night flight would cover a lot of ground. Married we were, happily for a while, but not to each other. Just a man and woman talking about life. She traveled a lot, too. We agreed that life on the road, and its curves, make the straight road difficult, but more interesting. We talked about the country, travel, horses, and even a little bit about politics, and realized we had a lot in common. She was funny and plainly pretty, and I instantly felt like she liked me for myself, as I did her. It felt good.

After a couple of hours, she said, “I wonder where we are.”

I raised the window shade, looked out, said, “Lubbock,” and put the shade back down.

She laughed and commented, “Funny! That’s a good bit,” but I assured her the town below was indeed Lubbock. At first, I thought it funny too, until it dawned on me that it really wasn’t that funny because it seemed I’d spent more time in the air than with my family.

The woman was impressed: “You must travel a lot!” I explained that I was in the music business, worked all over the country, and indeed flew a lot. She said she did the same thing.

I had asked the flight attendant to confirm our whereabouts, and a moment or two later, the pilot came on the loudspeakers. “We just passed over Lubbock, Texas, on the right side of the plane.” We laughed and asked for some snacks. (It was easy: I could see Midland/Odessa south of Amarillo off to the left, and the lights of Lubbock below us. It looked like a giant Rand-McNally map all lit up.) She asked if I was in a group, and I said yes, and that we played about 180 cities a year. She said she was a singer and did about the same, then asked, “So, you must make records. Think I’ve heard any of them?” I mentioned that she might have heard “Mr. Bojangles,” and that I played mandolin on it. “Of course I have!” she said. “But that was by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Did you play on their record?” I informed her I was a founding member of the group, and heading to a show. “Whoa! You are in the band, and, well, how nice.”

Then it was my turn. “You said you sing. Have you done anything I might have heard?”

“Well, ‘I Never Promised You a Rose Garden,’” she answered. “You might have heard that.” Of course I had. I knew it was a big record, by Lynn Anderson, and told her so, adding that it had sold something like five million copies as a single.

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