Jessie posted a terrific photo of Willie Nelson on her blog last week. She was given a ticket to go to his concert up in Humboldt County where she lives. She snapped the picture just as he was going onstage, and in the blog, she wrote that seeing Willie sing changed her life.
It closed a circle for me. I don’t think parents realize they have these things like circles closing with their kids to look forward to. The thing has to happen, the circle has to close, before you see it. Now that it has happened, I must say that it is the coolest thing. I now know, also, that, if I wanted to, I could probably look forward to other circles closing involving Jessie and me, but I don’t think I want to. It would be smug. Yick. For better or worse, as a father and grandfather I am not a doter.
This particular circle started its long journey on July 4, 1980. On that day, seeing Willie sing changed my life. It was, and remains, the longest day of my life. I apologize again to my companions that day, my ex-wife (Jessie’s mom) and a splendid couple, Lynne and Bill Schwind, from San Antonio, who came along because I told them it would be fun. Bill even drove, poor devil.
The occasion was Willie’s Eighth and Last Annual Fourth of July Picnic, celebrated at Bee Cave, Texas, southwest of Austin in the Hill Country. I went down there to write about it for my newspaper. I talked to Willie, and he did sing, but I don’t remember that very well. It’s an interesting thing about memory. The memory is created more by the rememberer than the thing remembered. Willie is the memory’s bookmark, but what I, the rememberer, remember, is heat and stench, or, as they say around Bee Cave, “steench.”
Scientists just last week announced some findings about the brain and memory which could help explain this. They found that memory of an event resides in the same brain cells, or neurons, that activated, or “fired,” most furiously when the event was actually experienced. It is as if the memory neurons are actually re-living the event. It is possible, therefore, that, remembering that event, my talking-to-Willie memory neurons aren’t firing as furiously as my heat and stench memory neurons. It means I am re-living the heat and stench more than I am re-living Willie. I am sad about that, but relieved that, given the furious-firing premise of these memory findings, that I can remember anything at all besides sex.
The heat neurons were fired by the famous Texas Heat Wave of 1980 – they made T-shirts about it – and the fact that it took us, and the other 30,000 patrons in attendance, four hours to go the 10 miles on a two-lane road from the main highway to Bee Cave, and then four hours to get back out. A human can’t love Willie any more than that. The stench neurons were fired – many of them fusing in apoplexy – by a telephone booth on the edge of the concert grounds into which I ducked to phone my story to the paper, to find a temperature of maybe 130 degrees and a steench left by some bad Texas boys and girls who as the beer flowed and the day went on couldn’t hold it any longer. It took many days and showers before I didn’t smell like that phone booth. Thinking about it, I can smell it right now. Hey guys, your findings are right! Damn, I need a shower.
My memory neurons are definitely settled in the feeling of the ambiance of that Willie evening. Cowboys and hippies coming together in the cool twilight, under the oak trees, to enjoy together the spirit that radiates from his music and presence. I wish you could have been there! I like that our stories and experiences are so different though. I'll take mine any day! ;o)
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