Chickens on the Highway and other travel stories

I just got home from a trip that took me to Dallas on Sunday to do Celebration on the Daystar Network. Joni and Marcus Lamb are the hosts for the show and it's broadcast was live Monday morning. Great bunch of folks with facilities that are first rate. Great band and singers, too! The tech crew is terrific and it was just a lot of fun.

I drove from there to visit a relatively new radio station in Dallas. KVVT is billing itself as Classic Christian from the 70s, 80s, and 90s!!! Finally, somebody is re-introducing the huge body of work from the early and middle days of Christian music. They're hoping this is a trend that catches on . . . so am I!!


L B, Bryan, and Doug and the entire staff made me feel right at home. We recorded several spots for them to use in the future and talked about some of the old songs that were popular in the day . . . Home Free, Friend of a Wounded Heart, Almighty, When God's People Pray, Field of Souls and others. I still play a lot of them every night because people want to hear them and I think they're still relevant lyrically.

Monday afternoon, I drove towards Louisiana and stopped to see some friends in Ruston. Got to play an early Tuesday round of golf on a spectacular course then went on to visit my Mom and brother.

Missed seeing Mom on Mother's Day because, like so many Mother's Day Sundays in my life, I was playing a concert and just couldn't get there.

On the way from Dallas to Louisiana, on I-20, a couple of interesting things happened.

I was passing through Minden, LA and thought about a long-time friend that used to live there. I wondered what he was up to. He and I almost went into the recording studio business in the late 70s. A move that, we have agreed on all these years, would have ruined us both - we'd still be paying for that mistake! Anyway, Jerome has been president over several different financial institutions in Louisiana, Alabama and now lives in northeast Louisiana as the head of a local bank.

As I was driving, I was fighting fatigue, flipping between CDs, AM radio, FM radio, XM and so on. At the very minute Jerome came to mind, I hit the AM button and within 2 seconds heard, "This is Jerome . . ." and then proceeded to finish the 30 second commercial for their bank.

If I'd gone by that particular local AM station 10 seconds earlier, odds are, I would have moved right on. If I'd tuned in 10 seconds later, I wouldn't have known it was my old friend doing the commercial. Strange.

So I called him, told him about what had just happened. He was amused - then told me a story of him and his wife on a trip to a bank convention in Austin. One night during the convention, he and wife had gone to a restaurant where they had outdoor seating and some games. One young couple, he told me, was playing shuffle board and he and his wife went over to watch. The young couple started up a conversation, asked them to join in. He told me her name was Dottie. Dottie and her husband, Kevin, are friends of ours from Houston! So they had more than a casual connection immediately.

Small world??? It's microscopic!

It set me to wondering if God gives us these moments in life for some specific reason or just for our (or His) amusement. Do they happen out of the blue? Some unfathomable orchestration of time and space just to show us how little control we have? Or just to make us smile for a minute or two and realize how sweet life is? I don't know.

What do you think?

At any rate, I was seriously entertained by it all on my long drive across the interstate.

And a few other random thoughts and observations . . .

For some reason on this drive, I set the cruise control around 65 and was perfectly content to let the world fly by! And man, did they fly! When you're the one taking the leisurely pace, you always ask yourself, "Why are these people in such a hurry?" When you're the one in a hurry, it's more likely, "Get outta my way tortoise!!!" Anyway, thankful to be in no hurry at all, I passed a dozen Louisiana State Police doing their duty in the grassy median of the ancient Interstate 20. Even though I was 5 mph under the limit, I still tapped the brakes.

Geez.

And, for a few miles, I got stuck behind an 18-wheeler loaded with live chickens. I kept my distance because feathers and all kinds of, uh . . . well, feathers were flying out of the cages! I couldn't help but wonder what these chickens must have been thinking as their cages were being stacked up on the back of the trailer. "Hmmm . . . cluck . . . this can't be good."

Thanks to all of you who write so often. Stay in touch and God's rich blessings to you all.

Wayne