The idea was simple: we’d host a live comedy talk show in a theater every week and interview people from around town. Just like Letterman if Letterman was broadcast from a tiny theater in Nashville—or, really, just like Letterman if Letterman wasn’t actually broadcast.
My mother was not the sort to invite strangers inside, so I’m not sure how he made it into our house. But there he was, sitting on our sofa and telling my mother that he knew she was a good woman and, as a good woman, she would surely want to have the word of God in our home. A traveling Bible salesman had arrived at our door.
Bikes and I had not formed a strong and lasting partnership in the past, so why, at the brittle-boned age of fifty-four, was I keen on yet another two-wheeled dream date? I have no idea. But, reader, I bought it. A blue cruiser and a snazzy helmet to match.
I tried to dig a hole with a shovel, but half an hour later I’d made no more than a two-inch dent in that hard-as-granite claypan. So I borrowed a pickaxe from a neighbor and hacked at the dirt for hours, mixing in bag after bag of soil amendment. At the end of the day, though I still wasn’t confident something could take root there, I planted the camellia. This was a new beginning for both of us.
I was walking past Shelby Foote’s house, hidden by large pin oak trees, when I heard a lawnmower in the process of being cranked. Next came a series of curse words in an elegant Southern drawl that made swearing sound almost patrician.
After a series of embarrassing encounters, it should be clear to me by now that a songwriter’s need to be thanked by a fan is in no way commensurate with my own need to thank every single one of them, but still I persist.
