The Road Goes on Forever and the Party Never Ends

June 29, 2025

Your life means something. There is a master plan and even if you miss it or misinterpret it there’s still a meaning there. You could have seen it had you only looked.

Time, the situations you may find yourself a part of, and the results of those decisions are fluid. At any given time you have choices. One from column A or one from column B. As the Mexicans say, “It is like this, it is like that.” But that’s what freedom of choice is all about. And that choice is totally up to you. You may not think so, but even a condemned prisoner is often given a choice on his preferred method of execution. He obviously would prefer to live but that’s not one of the choices, so he has to choose the most comfortable way to check out. Boy! If that’s not an oxymoron I’m not a white boy from Austin. But it’s the choice he was forced to make by earlier choices.

The universe is like a celestial glass of beer. There isn’t one universe as we perceive it, but many. While we probe to find the edge of our apartment in the sky we are part of countless other “universes” all floating around, rising to the top of God’s infinite glass of beer.

The bottom line of all this is in God’s infinite wisdom the countless choices were created by Him but the ultimate decisions concerning those choices are ours!

I made choices. They led me from three homes and one mansion to Ocotillo Wells. People often ask me why I bring that up so much. Ocotillo was my Walden’s Pond. I became a writer there. During my time there nobody noticed the old man sitting alone, staring at the desert but I was evaluating my choices. I spoke to the desert wind, and in time the wind spoke to me. Now you don’t have to be crazy to do that, but it sure helps. But my journey was just beginning. Returning to Texas was the start. After that I kept making the wrong choices.

God does not punish us for bad choices. He just lets us live with them. When we get tired of living with bad choices, we become adept at making better ones. Before it was all over, I was convalescing on a porch in Tennessee overlooking the Cumberland River. At seventy it was time to call in the dogs and pee on the fire but the wind said, “Now you are ready. Take what your choices have taught you and teach others.” And I got up, and I came home to Texas and this time I persevered.

I’m not a great writer. I’m illiterate. I have a high school education from Killeen Texas, and that’s about as ignorant as one can get and they still let you drive a car by yourself. I’ve been married more or less six times, not counting Mexicans so don’t take my advice on that. I’m not an alcoholic because I never did like going to all them meetings with a bunch of drunks in denial. I’m not a “recovering” anything. I haven’t had a drink in four years . . . yet! But you know what I can do? I can show you how to screw up a choice because if nothing else I got that down. So goodnight Mary Ellen . . . whereEVER you are!

The road goes on forever and the party never ends.