I shouldn’t begin with the punchline to this story, but it’s popped into my mind more than once in the past few months as this perceived-to-be-significant birthday has been on the horizon. I was in Nashville, hanging out at Bullet Recording Studio with Earl Richards, jb, and a band called Dreamer. Earl was stripping my vocals and some of the instrumentation from my “Thunder and Lightning” and adding steel guitar and a couple of other countrified additions to go with Dreamer’s vocals, remaking the song into a country record. It was the wee hours, maybe two o’clock in the morning, and Dreamer was hungry. Earl thought up an order and asked me to go down to Krystal on West End for some cheap eats.

So, I made the short trip and walked up to the counter, where a short woman, probably in her 30s awaited my order. She wore the company headgear of those days (which might not be the same as pictured here). Her black hair was escaping whatever means she was using to try and contain it. And when she smiled her welcome, she was missing her two top front teeth.

“Can I help you?” she asked, at the ready to take my order.

“Yeah, I’d like sixty Krystals, ple–“

“Thixty!?!” she exclaimed, squinting up at me.

It’s a funny memory, and I’ve often shared it with friends over the years. Her expression has faded somewhat now, but I can still hear the way she said — or sprayed — sixty. And as I’ve been approaching my 60th birthday, I’ve heard that funny exclamation often, and I find myself thinking it–not only in relation to that number of the little gut bombs but also to my years on Earth–with something of the same surprise and shock she must’ve felt when I started my order.

November 25, 1958, 1:57 AM, the hospital at Shaw Air Force Base in Sumter, South Carolina.

We lived in Sumter for a couple of years, I think, before moving to Fayetteville, North Carolina, for a couple more and then “home” to Walnut.

From zero to sixty in ever accelerating years . . .

November is a problematic month for me. I lost both my father and father-in-law in separate Novembers. But at least it has Thanksgiving, perhaps the best and least commercialized of the major holidays in these United States of America. And November has my birthday, although I’m finding that increasingly problematic as well.

As my computer counts down to 1:57 AM on November 25, 2918, I’m in South Carolina again. In Charleston this time, the Holy City, with Leesa. Nothing could be finer.

I’m sure I thought I would write a lot more than this on such a momentous occasion, but it’s practically two o’clock in the morning, for crying out loud! And I’m now sixty years old!