Part the Second

This deserves to be its own post.

Not all of you will want to read it.

Hank Wiliams, Jr. has always been in my mind, in particular the following song.

All my rowdy friends have settled down and it seems to be more in the laid back songs.
Nobody wants to get drunk and get loud.Everybody just wants to go back home.
I myself have seen my wilder days and I have seen my name at the top of the page,
but I need to find a friend just to run around.But no one wants to get high on the town
and all my rowdy friends have settled down.

A friend of mine played that for me when we were 22. I didn’t understand why he did it, but I loved the song, and most of everything I’d heard from Junior to date.

That night, me and several other of the mostly sober people at the party (including my friend with the guitar), chased another friend through the hills and back woods, in various vehicles, with varying offroad capabilities. This friend was going off to do a bad thing to someone who did not deserve it, and we knew that he didn’t deserve what would have happened to him if he did.

With me so far?

My car got stuck in a ditch. It turns out, it was the only thing that stopped “the walking man” from his task, all logic and reason having failed. Friendship was enough to soothe the savage breast. We all went back up to the house, and when I woke up the next morning, my friend with the guitar had loaded up his van, and driven out of town.

Two weeks later, we got a phone call that informed us he had taken his own life.

That really sucked.

He didn’t call us. We didn’t get to be his friends at the end.

But I understood why he played the song for me, and I’ve never forgotten it.

I’m not settling down anytime soon. But I’d really like to, someday. When I do, I hope you all know that if the phone rings, I’ll answer it, and help you howl at the moon. Ladies, please understand. It’s not that I don’t care for you, or want you to be happy.

I’m just never going to lose another one if I can help it.