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This week, the high school class of 1959 will converge on Lubbock to renew old acquaintances, remember days of old, play catch-up, and swap life’s stories. Excitement reigns as the date draws nigh.

Lubbock raised us right. I had to leave to realize that fact. Mac Davis, a favorite son of our vintage, expressed it beautifully in Lubbock in My Rearview Mirror, an anthem for every youth with a false sense of sagacity who cannot wait to venture forth to greener pastures.

Now with too much white in the hair, but years of hard-earned wisdom under the belt, we return home. Yeah, in some fashion, Lubbock will always be home. This city provided a safe, nurturing cocoon in which adults cared for all of us, a rare environment thses days.

This week we will visit with faculty and staff who are still around. The surprising aspect is that they want to reunite with those who once tried their soul. Coaches, assistant principals, English, math, Latin teachers, and those who instilled within us an appreciation for the fine arts will check out each former student and issue a final grade.

We will belly laugh with old cohorts, sweethearts, and competitors. We will return to the people and place that made us who we are. Content with where we find ourselves, the conversation will flow like honey.

The final verse of Mac’s song echoes hauntingly in my brain.”Happiness is Lubbock, Texas growing nearer and dearer, and the vision is getting clearer in my mind.”

Ya’ll be there!

A beautiful Sunday morning–I’m up at the crack of dawn to irrigate a dry lawn with thirst quenching waters from the Rio Grande, much as the ancients have done throughout the centuries.

I stumble into the bathroom to wash the sleep from bloodshot eyes then dress, pull on my boots, and meander out to the back ditch to meet neighbors already congregated. David, next door, has opened the main gate and filled the ditch from which our block will draw an allotment of life sustaining liquid.

Yard dogs up and down the ditch holler just to remind us they are present. Once acknowledged, they cease yapping and eagerly await arrival of the flood through which they run and play in frantic glee. Later, these mutts will track mud and debris into their respective homes sending the lady of the house into a manic state of pissed.

Neighborly conversation flows with the rhythm of the current as we catch up on happenings in our lives–how the kids are doing, the health condition of ol’ man Jones’ at the end of the block, and such.

Once my gate is opened and water rushes into the yard, I wonder to the front to ensure the flow reaches that part unhindered, then go in the kitchen to brew a cup of coffee. Once it is doctored to just the right shade, much the color of the muddy ditch water, I mosey onto the back deck to sit and soak up the morning.

Flights of egrets grace the sky, and wild parrots raise hell. As the water level rises, several species wade about the yard drinking and poking in the mud for bits of nourishment. A pair of mallards drop in to paddle around and root for decayed iris bulbs beneath an old uncultivated garden. The hen softly honks her love song while the drake follows her path wheezing his adoration for her.

A barn owl swoops to the boughs of a cottonwood tree, screeches an announcement of his return home from a successful night’s hunt, then disappears into a hollow trunk to sleep and find renewal. Sixty-three buzzards take to the sky from their roost in a stand of cottonwoods across the street, slowly circling, gaining altitude until they ride air currents at elevations that seem to rival the airliner billowing pencil thin vapor trails against the pinkish-orange dawn sky.

Tonight we will be serenaded by a chorus of frogs who interrupt their hibernation to emerge every irrigation weekend from the mud below.

My breaths come slowly now, as does the heart rate. The water gurgles as I sip hot coffee. Damn, life is grand!

I rose from bed this morning and flipped on the radio to catch the news while shaving. A voice reminded me of today’s date. Most of us old enough remember where we were when JFK was assassinated. Same holds true for September 11th.

My mind immediately drifted back to that morning eight years ago. I was shaving then, as today, when a radio news commentator broke into the programming to inform listeners that a plane had crashed into the World Trade center. I went quickly to the television and flipped on the set. The network bounced from commentator to commentator getting various perspectives and witness accounts. Speculation was rampant as to what kind of plane had caused the disaster. As I watched the burning horror LIVE and pondered how an airliner could be flying that low over the city, the silhouette of another airliner flashed from the right of the screen and plunged into the south tower of the Trade Center. Flames and smoke billowed from the fracture, provoking the instant realization that this was no accident. The United States of America was under attack and at war.

I sat before the television as news filtered in of two more attacks with our own airlines the weapons of mass destruction, the lives of the innocents on board and in the buildings instantly snuffed as collateral damage as in any war. The pentagon within our own capitol brazenly assaulted and defiled. A plane plunging into the fields of Pennsylvania.

Throughout that day the stories unfolded of tragic last phone calls to loved ones and heroic acts by victims and responders to the emergencies. Tears rolled down my cheeks as the magnificent assault by passengers gradually was revealed, the last words being, “Let’s Roll!” Their charge into battle saved our nation’s capitol.

This morning, the radio broadcast commentaries from memorial services to the dead of that tragedy. We forget the same organizations that committed those acts have not been defeated, and still proclaim us their enemy. We are still at war, like it or not. My ears listened in the present but the images in the brain were of those horrors eight years ago.

I toweled off remnants of shaving creme and dressed. Filled with a burning desire to make a statement, I carried a ladder to the front porch and mounted my stars spangled banner on the eaves of the house. It was a glorious morning today, daybreak just busting forth. Glancing up and down the block no other flags could be seen. That’s OK. My own meager remnant, slightly tattered, slightly faded, is gallantly holding forth the notion that this is the land of the free and the home of the brave.

A well-worn symbol of our freedom, God’s magnificent gift to each of us.