Will the Circle Be Unbroken? by Sean Dietrich

Author:Sean Dietrich
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2020-01-04T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 18

FOOLS AND CHILDREN

Mobile, Alabama. A bar and grill. Very little emphasis on “grill.” Mobile is up the road from my house, only a few hours away. There are only two major cities near me. Pensacola and Mobile. I am here tonight with my band. We are playing music until the wee hours. Almost every weekend, we have been coming to Mobile to play for establishments like this.

I love it here. You should see this place. Live oaks surround the bar with limbs that twist in all directions, covered in moss, arching over an empty highway. These trees seem too wise to be so close to a rundown saloon like this, but they can’t do anything about their plight. They can only grow where they are.

They are trees from an ancient world, and there is mystery to them that words do little to describe. They are older than the men who built this tavern. They will be here long after this place erodes into a heap of sand. And when the wind rushes through their leaves, you get the feeling these trees know all this somehow.

Parked beneath the trees are scores of trucks, sitting side by side like horses on the hitching post. Each vehicle bears a bumper sticker with a slogan like: “Gun control means using both hands.” Or: “Four out of every three people have trouble with fractions.”

Patrons smoke cigarettes. Most men wear caps with heavy equipment logos. A few wear cattleman hats. Quiet conversations are swallowed by the sounds of laughing.

Two women walk by a group of older men. The women are middle-aged, wearing tight-fitting jeans. The men are gray-haired. The old boys stand straight, suck in their bellies, and smile. One man opens the door for the women.

Every man wants to be noticed by a lovely young woman tonight. And every woman hopes to be noticed by a handsome young man. Too bad there are no lovely young women nor handsome men here. Only regular people.

My band had just finished playing a Hank Williams number entitled: “My Bucket’s Got a Hole in It.” People applauded half-heartedly. Over the microphone, I told the audience—if that’s what you would call a roomful of people shouting over our music—that we’d be back in fifteen minutes. Nobody seemed to care whether we were.

I wish someone would’ve told me that the older you get, the faster time starts to move. When you’re born, you are crawling on the slow-moving treadmill of life. In your teens, you’re walking. By your thirties, you’re running.

Adulthood overtakes you. It’s incremental. You lose track of speed and forget all about your age. Soon you realize you’ve been in college for nearly a decade.

That was me. After leaving job sites, I would screech into a college parking lot, change my dirty shirt, apply deodorant, eat a peanut butter sandwich, and write a five-hundred-word essay with a pencil. Then I would sprint into class, leaving a trail of notebook paper behind me. And I loved every minute of it.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.