FIRESIDE No. 1 with Joe Brouillette

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Please join us&nbsp;<a href="../blog/post/introducing-fireside" target="_blank" rel="noopener">FIRESIDE</a>&nbsp;tomorrow, September&nbsp;5<span style="font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Calibri',sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;">th, for the first installment in our new written/longform blog series.&nbsp;
In this troubled world, I guarantee our first guest's spark will pierce the dark and warm your hands and heart.
Find a new message of worky/life-hope <a href="../blog">right here</a>, every week through December 26<span style="font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Calibri',sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;">th&nbsp;2017. &nbsp;
The guise will be management, yes, and lots of it, but the essence will be life itself.
I'm a huge believer that "leaders are readers," and as someone always on the hunt for good, fresh information while sitting in a plane or on the road at a restaurant after a long day's work, my face drops when I find article after article on LinkedIn, Facebook, or wherever that is 2,000 words or less. FIRESIDE entries begin at 5,000 words, and some will run 10,000 words each. That's 15-20 single-spaced pages every week of 90-minute one-on-one interviews with some of the finest Executives and Managers and Leaders I've ever had the privilege to meet.
They are written so that you may share them, print them out, underline them, pin them to a bulletin board, or save them and return to them in coming months.
Most interviewees are not household names, but they should be, and several of them have served in pivotal roles in some of the most influential organizations in the world, or have gone unseen whilst making life-changing contributions behind the scenes.
A person responsible for voicemail. A person responsible for ticketless travel. A person responsible for daily operations in one of the finest glass companies in the world. A person responsible for educating/positively impacting thousands of children annually. A person responsible for one of the finest real estate companies in the region. A successful six-time author. One of the country's most sought-after mastery coaches. One of the nation's most influential natural resource advisors. An executive at a precious metals company that has weathered storm after storm, and still stands, head held high. A highly ethical/awarded investment and financial advisor. Two executives who have survived the worst losses one can imagine, come out the other side, and found new ways to contribute and make a difference. And on and on it goes: great people, often behind the scenes, with largely unheard stories that may sound familiar, and now you can put a name to a notion.
In our four months together, we visit Washington state, Colorado, California, Ohio, Arizona, New Mexico, Michigan, Texas, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Florida, Minnesota, Ontario province, and many more locations TBD. We'll light bonfires all over the freakin' place, and I'll deliver the transcript of each straight to this blog mid-week for your eyeballs to consume.
There will be some fun surprises in there, and I think you'll be rewarded for faithful readership.
If you enjoy them, or are educated by them, or are encouraged by them, please share them.
For all its beauty, ours is a dark and fallen world, and I'm convinced we need every ray of light we can locate, and every warm glow we can muster.
Only time will tell whether you find either here, but I shall endeavor mightily to bring them to you...one pixel, one page, one interview, one week, one blog at a time.
Now that you've grabbed your marshmallows, blankie, and boots, all that remains is you.
Keep your eyes open. It's acomin' tomorrow.
Hope to see you fireside.
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FIRESIDE, Coming Tomorrow—

Got your s'mores? CHECK.
Got your blankie? CHECK.
Grab your boots and let's go!
Just two more days!
Please join us&nbsp;<a href="../../blog/post/introducing-fireside" target="_blank">FIRESIDE</a>&nbsp;on&nbsp;September&nbsp;6th, where our first guest's spark pierces the dark and warms the hands and heart. &nbsp;
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Tick-tock, 2 more days 'til FIRESIDE!

Please join me with your marshmallows&nbsp;<a href="../../blog/post/introducing-fireside" target="_blank">FIRESIDE</a>&nbsp;on&nbsp;September&nbsp;6th, where our first guest's spark pierces the dark and warms the hands and heart. &nbsp;
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Get those marshmallows ready, only 3 more days!

Please join me <a href="../../blog/post/introducing-fireside" target="_blank">FIRESIDE</a>&nbsp;on&nbsp;September&nbsp;6th, where our first guest's spark pierces the dark and warms the hands and heart. &nbsp;
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Igniting in 8 more days: FIRESIDE

Introducing FIRESIDE

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To everything I wrote last year&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/1ZBAK04">http://bit.ly/1ZBAK04</a><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Calibri',sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;">&mdash;which still holds true&mdash;I would add "what a whirlwind your 13th year has been." Each June comes and goes more quickly than levels on a treadmill. Since the dawn of time, people have warned, "Enjoy every minute of it; before you know it, they're grown and gone." We listened, and we do, but nothing stops time, least of all the observance of each grain slipping through the hourglass.
God willing (every day being a gift), I guesstimate we have perhaps 214 Opening Night Movies together, then you'll kick us to the curb or fly our crazy coop and be gone to the winds.
In the meantime, I relish being passed by, for it means you are growing up, and that is good, necessary, and inevitable.
I notice now that you tromp me regularly in our conversations about movie trivia, answering at the buzzer when my mind drifts off toward, "What was that actor's name...you know...the one from...."
And you know all "the lingo," teaching me yesterday that BAE is not quite British Aerospace Electronic, as I thought it was, but is, in fact, something altogether different.
You're faster, sometimes forty steps ahead; you're taller, though not quite taller than me (yet!); you're quicker<span style="font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Calibri',sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;">&mdash;almost always getting to the punchline or answer before your old man.
I love it. We've come a long way, kiddo, a very long way indeed.
As your 14th year begins, I pray it's the best yet.
Though often I'm right beside you, and sometimes farther behind, I am always here.
Now let's go see a show.&nbsp;

Happy Fourteenth, Lauren!

<div id="id_55721d576333b0056849918" class="text_exposed_root text_exposed">"Happy Anniversary!" &gt;8,395 dawns Spring 1989&mdash; Every Tuesday/Thursday at precisely eight o&rsquo;clock in the morning for thirteen weeks, I find myself in a sea of more than one hundred beleaguered Baylor freshmen. I sit in the center of the classroom for &ldquo;Earthquakes &amp; Natural Disasters,&rdquo; halfway in and halfway up. Three rows ahead&mdash;between me and the professor&rsquo;s obnoxiously bright overhead projector&mdash;I see the back of your haloed head, perfectly lit when he flips the switch and casts transparencies describing lava, Charles Richter and tectonic plates. You are ponytailed, routinely late, and always in sweats. You look like Courtney Thorne-Smith&rsquo;s sister and, naturally, I&rsquo;m smitten. October 1989&mdash; Alone, as has been my pattern, I go to a cinema one Friday night to see Look Who&rsquo;s Talking starring John Travolta and Kirstie Alley. I sit in the center here, too, halfway in and halfway up. Moments later, I notice you enter, accompanied by three or four girlfriends. I make a mental note, &ldquo;Find that girl.&rdquo; Days later, after some ferreting, grapevining, scouting and recon, I divine your name. In my dorm, I find a yearbook of sorts, scan to the D&rsquo;s and, jackpot, there you are. One nervous and awkward phone call later, we find ourselves on a first date. It is Monday, October 16th. Starting at the suspension bridge overlooking the Brazos, we walk, make our way to the grassy bank, toss a football, and eat and laugh at Wendy&rsquo;s for the better part of two hours. I have perhaps nine dollars to my name, worry that you&rsquo;ll order more than I can afford, but eventually think to myself, &ldquo;A girl who loves movies, runs post patterns in Levi&rsquo;s without batting an eye, and scarfs down a burger and Frosty instead of a salad...where do I sign?!?&rdquo; A few dizzying weeks later, I describe you to my dad by saying, &ldquo;With her, every day feels like Christmas.&rdquo; (We shall later use that as an excuse for leaving our Christmas tree up year-round.) For the next two decades, we&rsquo;ll experience our fair share of April fools, but it remains a lifetime of thanksgiving. May 30, 1993&mdash; You make me the proverbial &ldquo;happiest man alive.&rdquo; 1992-2015 We live in the desert. We live in an apartment the size of a shoebox with two sheddy cats. You endure my &ldquo;exercise&rdquo; phase, during which Weider home gym equipment cannibalizes precious bedroom space in three consecutive residences. You support me when I teach taekwondo in the evenings for extra cash. You wait patiently for years while I continue school, ceaselessly reading and writing and studying and striving to become a more able and stable provider. We win some, lose lots, tread water, and move a few times. You hold the fort, pay the bills, and subsist on 5-minute nightly phone calls courtesy of my worn and faded MCI card while I travel more than 2,500 days in the first half of my career and our marriage. In time, God willing, you bring two beloved children into this world, the first whom remains the light of our lives and the second whom we consecrate to memory and commemorate with steadfast friends and a laurel tree that now stands twenty feet high in the backyard of one of your girlfriends whom accompanied you to Look Who's Talking twenty-seven years ago. In all things&mdash;travel, business, residency, relationships, hopes realized and dreams periodically dashed, you trust me. You follow, accompany, lead, stand behind, stand beside, or carry. Despite my panoply of oddities and eccentricities, you&mdash;as in &ldquo;Earthquakes &amp; Natural Disasters&rdquo;&mdash;perennially stand before me and, now, for me, too. Often ponytailed, frequently in sweats, sometimes late, but forever there. Faithful, true, kind, gracious, grounded, funny, whip-smart, encouraging, warm, competitive, mischievous. In sickness and health, always loving and cherishing and leading and serving and supporting me and countless others. On those unfortunate but inevitable occasions when life, the economy, health, or people spat in my face and kicked me in the groin and burned my world to the ground and I found myself spent and rent and reeling and kneeling in ash and covered in soot, I have inevitably looked up and ahead to see that you remain, every time, my constant lighthouse in the storm. When the winds die and the smoke clears, you abide with a palmful of soil and seed as if to say, &ldquo;It&rsquo;ll be okay. God has a plan. Here, let&rsquo;s plant this, pray, be patient, and see what is re-imagined or restored.&rdquo; Time marches on; seasons come and go. And then one morning, up through the black arises a spritely shoot, then a meadow, then a forest. It reliably works this way. &ldquo;It will work out. It always does.&rdquo; *** 2016&mdash; Though I accept we cannot predict the future, I remain optimistic about it. We are guaranteed no tomorrows, but as we lie in bed at night, I run my fingers through your hair until you fall asleep, gently remove your glasses from your warm face, place them quietly on my bedside table, lock up, turn off the lights, ready our home for rest, and give thanks to the good Lord above for one more day. Perhaps tomorrow I will awake again, extravagantly blessed another time to be and do with you and buoyed by the hope that arrives with dawn.</div>
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Happy 23rd Anniversary to My Beloved Bride

Today a client asked for some possible images to express a recent idea he had. "Can you show me some 'ferocious' movie men, maybe?"
"Ferocity? Yessir, we can do that."
"And tenacious, determined."&nbsp;Right. Got it.
Fun assignment, up the proverbial alley.
In fact, I had just been talking with someone the other day about a few of these. Childhood memories, many of them.
There are some cool, nostalgic items here.&nbsp;
I only wish we'd had more than an hour (there are so many gems!), but he did say these succeeded at getting the incubatory idea across the ol' finish line.
Ooh Rah!
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&ldquo;I&rsquo;m gonna take this right foot, and I&rsquo;m gonna whop you on that side of your face, and you wanna know something? There&rsquo;s not a damn thing you&rsquo;re gonna be able to do about it.&rdquo;
&ldquo;Quickly as you can, snatch the pebble from my hand.&rdquo;
&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t mess with the bull, young man; you&rsquo;ll get the horns!&rdquo;
&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think you can take us all.&rdquo; &ldquo;No, but I&rsquo;ll get an &lsquo;A&rsquo; for effort.&rdquo;
&ldquo;I want you to be nice, until it&rsquo;s time to not be nice.&rdquo;
&ldquo;Nothing like a good piece of hickory.&rdquo;
&ldquo;On the bloody morning after, one tin soldier rides away.&rdquo;

"Ferocity? Yessir, we can do that."

Prince died today, age 57.
It's been a rough 2016. We've already lost a lot of great artists this year, and it's only April 21st.
One would be hard pressed to find anyone under, say, 65, who either doesn't know who Prince is, or who doesn't have a story or anecdote about him. Prince didn't perform the soundtrack to my life, but if my life had a soundtrack, he would certainly be on it.
I have recollections of his music dating as far back as 1979, and I can remember<span style="font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Calibri',sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;">&mdash;clear as day<span style="font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Calibri',sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;">&mdash;the ratty little theater and the names and faces of high school friends who sat, equally enraptured, watching 1984's breakout movie&nbsp;Purple Rain.&nbsp;
Not twenty feet from here I have a turntable, and against that turntable is a stack of Prince vinyls.&nbsp;
On January 12th of this year, I sat at Burgers and Brew on the UC Davis campus, downloaded HITNRUN Phase Two,&nbsp;mashed earbuds deep into my ears, and must have played the buoyant new song&nbsp;Baltimore&nbsp;about two dozen times in the span of ninety minutes, noshing on a guacamole burger with pepper jack cheese, sweet potato fries, and that elixir of life, Dr Pepper. It was a typically gorgeous California evening and, as one thing leads to another, I eventually found myself on Wikipedia, then on site after site after site recounting his childhood, his musical influences, his recording contract difficulties, his litigious copyright attacks on fans and others who surreptitiously used his content without permission, his infamous record deal emancipation, his inscrutable moniker (TAFKAP era), his recent health difficulties, his religious beliefs, his concert dates, his forthcoming autobiography, his on and on and on.
I came across countless photos, of course, but one, in particular, caught my eye. He was standing on a tarmac beside a small private aircraft, just a few weeks prior (circa December 2015) to perform a private concert for some queen or socialite. Beside him was his bodyguard, who held his black leather duffel bag and personal effects. And in Prince's hand was a snazzy walking cane.
It made me feel sad, worrying a bit<span style="font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Calibri',sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;">&mdash;for perhaps the first time<span style="font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Calibri',sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;">&mdash;about his health.
I read of rumors regarding his recent ailments, including chronic difficulties with his hips (having performed so physically over the years in high heels, and periodically coming down wrong on one stage or another). As the tabloids would have you believe it, he allegedly refused to pursue double hip replacement surgery because it would require a blood transfusion, verboten among Jehovah's Witnesses.
Interesting as it was, he had denied it all.
No matter; it's irrelevant.
As we each do, I wandered and puttered and clicked and investigated one story after another while the music played and college kids and professors out with their families swirled around me on this gorgeous deck beneath an enormous swaying tree, eating and imbibing, everyone warming her and himself beside outdoor heaters like moths beside flames.
I remember thinking to myself, "He has outlived Michael Jackson. I'm glad he's still with us. He's endured a lot."
I then recalled a story from a friend, Bonnie, who had once seen Prince perform in some small, sweaty bar in Minnesota, years ago, in the early 2000's. Apparently, it was during a low point in his career, and what he preferred as an 'intimate venue' sounded, according to her, more like a literal dive. "Everyone was ignoring him, carrying on, shouting over his music. He was standing right there. It was bleak."
Oh, how times change.
In the years immediately following Purple Rain, he could have filled something as large as an AT&amp;T Stadium to the rafters. As recently as the past few years, he sold as many shows as he wanted.
But yes, he was known for being reclusive, and for playing lots of private gigs, but also for recently appearing on TV and at random theaters and awards shows. It would seem he was becoming less 'shy,' if that's a word one might associate with Prince.
Clearly, all careers<span style="font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Calibri',sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;">&mdash;particularly public ones<span style="font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Calibri',sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;">&mdash;have their fair share of ups and downs, highs and lows, springs and winters. Prince was no different in this regard; no one is immune from failure, much less the changing tastes and aesthetics of a fickle public. Everyone tires of most everyone and everything after a while, particularly when they are as omnipresent as someone like Prince or, say, Phil Collins, once a darling of radio, now a virtual clich<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; color: #666666; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">&eacute;d schlocky pariah.
Prince was always, however, timeless. A true maestro; master of the hook, the beat, the wonderful riff and soaring guitar solo, and dominator of some thirty-odd instruments. He was similarly a starmaker, a ghostwriter, album producer extraordinaire, and the flawless performer of Purple Rain&nbsp;the single which, clocking in at nearly seven minutes, was good enough on stage to make the released album in one single take.
Whether writing something as bare, sparse, and stripped down as Sinead O'Connor's Nothing Compares 2 U or producing something as elaborate as a multi-city concert with pyrotechnics and thirty musicians in tow, Prince was a luminary, a whistling thrush, a virtuoso from whom music emanated as naturally and essentially as from a songbird.
He always sang his little heart out, all 5' 2" of him.
I shall miss him dearly, as shall hundreds of millions more, evidenced by his breaking both the internet and every streaming music service today.
Public controversies, private and personal missteps, and periodically profane musical pursuits notwithstanding, he had talent galore, voice, and something to say. He had a point of view. In a world of same-same and derivation, it is refreshing to hear someone who, like he, continued to grow, to evolve, to create, to challenge convention; to reinvent and remain relevant, releasing as many as three new studio albums in the past two years alone, each of which possesses one gem or another.
That's remarkable. Lots of artists become jukeboxes, repeating their hits into oblivion, snapping the record needle off the arm. Prince created anew again and again and again. I admire that.
Say what you will about his shortcomings and failings; he lived. He produced songs as iconic today as they were thirty-nine years ago, and I doubt very much that's something we'll be saying about Bieber, West, et al. in 2049.
The music industry has changed to its core, and we've lost lots of great folks recently, but I thank my lucky stars<span style="font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Calibri',sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;">&mdash;as perhaps you do, too<span style="font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Calibri',sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;">&mdash;that I got to experience Prince in his heyday. At the height, dancing as a dorky teenager to amazing songs played on someone's thunderous boombox at a summer of '85 barn party at Babler's. And at the lowest, retrieving an ejected cassette from my CJ7, totaled in '86, just relieved I'd snatched the slippery tape before the wrecker hauled the larger muddy mess away in the rain.
Lots and lots of memories with that guy.
Good and bad, I treasure them all.
Thank you, your Purple Bedazzled Highness.
May you rest in music, forever bathed in His light and surrounded by fluttering doves that coo and never cry.

The Day the Music Died. Again.

For seven rambunctious years, 6th grade through 12th, I had the most affable friend, David Feagins.
Or, as everyone affectionately called him, "Feags."
You know how a sound<span style="font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Calibri',sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;">&mdash;like a smell<span style="font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Calibri',sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;">&mdash;can take you back in time? In the same way baked cookies take me back to my grandmother's kitchen, a particular stereo sound takes me back to Feags.&nbsp;
Feags played the trumpet, a mean trumpet. He could squeak and hiss and DOMAIN that thing, man, like a limb.
It was part of him. He practiced forever, had callouses on his fingertips, and was always putting Chapstick on his swollen lips to recover.
Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, anything by Chicago or a big brass band...these were all his scene and certifiable hipcats. He would play Spinning Wheel by Blood, Sweat &amp; Tears so frequently and so fully that the cassette tape would squeak from stretching and the deck would plead for its life, very nearly overheating in its protestations.
Feagins loved music. Absolutely loved it.
It accompanied him everywhere.&nbsp;
Walk into his bedroom, and he'd head straight to a bank of Technics receivers, turntables, decks, equalizers, speakers, you name it. Cords running this way and that and taped down everywhere. He'd flip the switch on some particular hardware, fill the air with ominously humming electrical promise, tinker with a dozen silver and black dials, get things just so and perfectly right, then crank an oversized master knob 'til the whole house vibrated off the blocks.
As a teen, I and my entire family could hear Feags approaching in his pick-up truck from a mile away.
He would arrive up our gravel driveway in a stop-cloud of plinking rocks and flying dust&mdash;more friends in tow spilling out of the bed&mdash;then honk the horn and I'd gamely pile in for another rowdy night heading to Furneaux Creek or Prestonwood Cinema to catch something like Fright Night or Top Gun or anything loud and raucous with Stallone, Norris, Van Damme, Seagal, and eternally unfortunate bad guys. 
In the summer, Dave would appear everywhere with a boom box, those blastable cassettes of his carrying the pool party and eventual night away on a wavy sea of sound.
He was quick to smile and wink, ceaselessly mischievous, and that soggy toothpick he'd twist mercilessly between his teeth usually indicated he had gotten himself into one crevasse or another jam. As we neared college, his upper lip finally grew some black fuzz, and he'd twirl the makings of a moustache while "scheming a scheme" or hatching new plans for future daredevil jumps, rope swings, zip-lines, dirt-bike feats, or skeet-shoot shenanigans (like ingeniously luring unsuspecting bats to nighttime feasts of cantaloupes or watermelons skewered on a barbed-wire, moonlit fence post) where he could dust them one at a time with his trusty .12 gauge.
Every year, a couple dozen of us from church would make our way northwest to Durango, CO and ski our novice feet off for the better part of a week at Purgatory. We were all sloppy Texans, christened by our chaperones as "The Wolfpack," because several of the boys were literal and figurative howlers, but Feagins was unquestionably the most maniacal man on the mountain. The second we'd slide off that lift at the top, he'd immediately twitch right or left, draw those yellow goggles down hard, gnaw his gloves off, crouch into a goofy squatted stance and, very nearly biting two fresh fingers placed masterfully between his teeth, whistle like some demented sheep herder, point those rented skis toward the bottom of the hill in the same way Babe Ruth pointed afar and<span style="font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Calibri',sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;">&mdash;with unzipped jacket flailing and flapping around and behind him and that tattered ski pass fluttering like a flag in March<span style="font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Calibri',sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;">&mdash;arrive at the bottom of Demon's Run in three minutes' flat, often one or two poles lighter, and usually festooned with pine needles and tree branches springing from his cap. Circling moguls was for locals and proles, not Texans who came to claim air.
Predictably, he'd get stern warnings from Ski Patrol to "watch it" or "slow down or I'll shut you down." If they had issued traffic violations, I'm certain Dave woulda wound up in court by 10 AM, with sheafs of stuffed paper spilling from every orifice of that raggedy parka.
By college, as is often the case, I suppose, virtually everyone I knew moved away, scattering like seeds to the wind.
Twelve years later, I found my way back home and, clear out of the blue, Feagins walked into my office.
He greeted me with laughter and a bear hug that nearly lifted me off my feet, we exchanged numbers and emails, began to correspond, and promised to get together soon.
I saw him twice more.
And then, one horrific afternoon, I heard the news that he and one of his two sons had died in a tragic car accident en route to New Mexico. Red River, as I recall, perhaps destined for boating or camping or summer fun.
I eventually found myself once again at his childhood home, speechless this time as I sat on the couch where I'd sat hundreds of times before yakking and yammering my young-adult face off. I was surrounded now by his young, grief-numbed widow, their eldest boy, thirty extended-family members, and friends from days long since passed&mdash;the characters found in the bed of his pick-up truck.
I stared into the presently dark and fireless fireplace, the one we had hitherto faithfully fed pellets at his father's bidding to warm his twitchy socked-and-tired feet after a long day's work at the plant. "You boys make yourselves useful," he'd cajole and wink, "and keep that fire a roarin.'"
Feagins' mother, Linda, had already succumbed to cancer, and his precious father, Jimmy, was ill-fated to die in a car wreck en route to East Texas not long after David's passing.
David was an only child.
There were no sufficient sympathies to be shared on those occasions, and certainly no words as we watched the disproportionate caskets of Feagins and his beloved boy lowered into the dry ground on a scorching Texas morn.
Fifteen years later, Feagins is still with me.
I see him every time I enter the megastore or any of the half-dozen surrounding restaurants that sprawl needily across the vast acreage of his family's former homestead where we shot rabbits and raced Yamahas and Kawasakis.
I often park far away, so I can walk the remembered trajectory of the long drive that led to his garage.
I pass the beautiful, enormous, silently swaying pecan tree<span style="font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Calibri',sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;">&mdash;the one&nbsp;literally right outside his former bedroom window<span style="font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Calibri',sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;">&mdash;to which&nbsp;we nailed 1x4's for target practice and which is, today, surrounded by well-groomed, crushed-rock walking paths and black iron benches for unbeknownst shoppers who pause to snarf or smoke beneath its shade.
They have no idea, of course, nor could they&mdash;the comings and goings that happened there&mdash;and sometimes my Forresty heart longs to sit on a bench and tell them, if only to resurrect David one more time.
Dave comes alongside me, though, when I hear the recognizable screech of a teenager's truck begrudgingly halting beside me at a stoplight.
When I hear a cassette tape strain to start or squeal to stop.
When I hear static on a receiver, or in the enormous, pendulous, parabolic speakers swaying overhead at concerts, groaning to life during sound check.
He is always here when Wynton Marsalis blares his trumpet from our television set during some news program or late night talk show.
And he came rushing back to me when I saw the trailer for Don Cheadle's forthcoming Miles Ahead.
Yes, Feags is always here, from pick-up truck to pellet gun to pellet stove, from summer tunes to ski slopes to all things stereo.
I see a glowy dial on a Technics or Marantz receiver, and blam, it's 1985 and I'm standing in his room, surrounded by posters, staring into the same horizon that I see now when I'm checking out at the megastore and stuffing claptrap into a plastic bag.
Gimme the reverb from an old Ohm speaker, and snap, we're listening to tapes and demos he's made, the ones he hopes might be tickets up and out and forward to someplace else, or better, or just different.
He was restless, knees always bouncing, eyes often on the door.
And though his land haunts my memory, my mind knows that his soul is free.
He is music now.
When it comes to great music, especially jazz, I'm liquified jello on the floor. A man, now 46, who wishes his crazy friend was still here, showing up loudly and unannounced at his office, asking when the Leathal Weapon can knock off and head to a show in that fiery, snorting, stomping, fuming rig running right out front.
What I wouldn't give to run outside, hop in, and join him for one long, loud, last ride. Windows down, radio blaring, heads bobbing in time, lips pursed and cheeks puffed and fingers playing those imaginary air trumpets.
Life is short, my friends.
Enjoy the music.
###

Ode to Feagins

I remember at about age 11 or 12 standing in our Morgan tool shed&mdash;searching for God knows what&mdash;and Dad remarked, &ldquo;You find what you&rsquo;re hunting for in the last place you look.&rdquo; He was absolutely right, and I don&rsquo;t think he was talking about pliers.
Success or cessation.
When we believe we have found what we are looking for, or actually have, well, I guess we have &ldquo;succeeded&rdquo; and, naturally, we stop searching.
When we don&rsquo;t find the thing, well, we often quit, having failed. Or, said another way, having &ldquo;ceased,&rdquo; and perhaps too soon.
I&rsquo;m not necessarily suggesting we search forever.
&nbsp;
But I am suggesting the hunt and the find might very well be one and the same.
###