Coffee shop singer

Lee was a self-taught folksinger whose second love was music. He was a starving green-eyed romantic with a uniform of ripped-knee jeans and plain white T-shirts. His hundred-dollar peroxide haircut was mussed up enough to suggest he had mowed it himself.

Born with Ivy League blood in New Hampshire, he skipped Dartmouth and caught the interstate west. He declared himself destitute, free from the trappings of wealth. For backup, he relied on a small trust fund.

I met Lee at a coffee shop where teens and old hippies waited their turn to play. Lee swaggered to the corner stool with his battered guitar. The lacquered wood glistened with hairline scratches. His calloused fingertips had gradually faded the fretboard, especially the frets closest to the tuning pegs.

The microphone was set up in an area normally reserved for paying customers. I hung onto every word and let the chiming guitar strings lead me with their leash.

With a tambourine jangling beneath his tapping foot, Lee rasped a folktale about a card game and the woman who got away. Between verses, his strumming swelled and subsided. After four verses, most coffee shop customers chatted to the background music and responded with scattered applause after the seventh and final verse.

Wish he would have recorded that one. All I remember is the aching chorus:

You're the queen who steals the hearts
An ace is up my sleeve
You aimed and fired two poison darts
What a mangled web we weave

How I learned to be patriotic

The foundation of my patriotism was built and inspired by my grandfather, a World War II veteran who died in May 2012. As a kid, I thought Grandpa had won the war by himself. As a grownup, I realize he had some help. He shared few stories until the last years of his life. By then, he wanted to unload his testimony to history, valor, heartbreak and all.

As a child, you're told to love your country. As an adult, you learn how to love your country. At a local Flag Day celebration, senior veterans pushed their raspy voices full throttle as they sang along to God Bless America and military anthems. Their patriotism had matured over a lifetime, enough for them to harness the beauty in those military marches. A few old-timers were moved to tears as they saluted.

And never have I heard music that simultaneously ached and warmed my soul than when I heard the lone bugler playing Taps at Grandpa's funeral.

The marching beat of "Stars and Stripes Forever" vibrates in my bones. I feel it in the fireworks that spiderweb across the sky. I sense it in my children as they sleep in the backseat on the way home while still holding their little U.S. flags.

You're fired

Most of us know what it's like to get fired. My collar heats up just thinking about the painful whips of rejection. The first employer to ever fire me was McDonald's. I deserved to get fired. I stole food, showed up late, and treated the managers with disrespect. I had it coming.

Some of us have watched a firing, and some of us have done the firing. If you're about to be fired, you sense it coming. I dreaded the confrontations, yet each one was surprisingly civil. The only employee who ever heard me say the words "you're fired" moved on to a higher wage with a shorter commute. Three years later, that employee's tenure was a blip to both of us.

The second employer to fire me was Dairy Queen. A manager once told me that if I didn't pick up the pace with the grill, I would be moved to the drive-through. Every guy got stuck working the grill, which had the longest list of cleaning duties. At least in the drive-through, I could practice my Kermit the Frog impression. That's not why I got fired. I don't fully remember why I got fired. But I probably deserved it.

Don't write that down

Sometimes when I interview people, I take notes. Sometimes these people think I am writing down everything they're saying. Sometimes they're right. Sometimes they're too self-conscious about saying the right thing when the right thing is going to come out anyway. Sometimes they say, "Don't write that down," as if that's what I'm doing. Sometimes they're wrong. Sometimes I have no interest in the interview's subject matter. Sometimes I do.

Aristocrats

Next time you think about the president of the United States being the most powerful human on the planet, consider the presidents who were more powerful than others.
How many blue-blooded aristocrats have ruled the White House in the past century? Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, both Bushes. Obama and Clinton are not American royals, no matter how close they get. The aristocratic presidents were born into wealth and privilege that spanned generations.

Walter's Searchlight

Below is an excerpt from "Walter's Searchlight," the upcoming novel by Anderson Hobbs (release date: January 2014)



This time, I mean it

     Time stood still the moment I first saw my child. In those frozen seconds before baby Lilly cried and opened her eyes, I witnessed the meaning of life.

     Exactly ten years later, my daughter sends me over the moon and brings me to my knees, sometimes in the same breath.

     I wonder if my father thought the same of me. I miss him, but I'm glad Pops can't see the way I live today. I am one big bundle of disappointment, wrapped in shame and tied together with regret. If I could turn back the clock and make better decisions, I would.

     I take full responsibility for hurting my baby girl. All I want to do is make things right. Like my father, I'm not perfect, but I will do the best I can. I will set an example for my daughter and prove I am more than what my failures suggest. I will fix what I broke, or die trying. This time, I mean it.

- Walter's latest journal entry