A wonderful night in Lubbock

The Column: 01.27.25

I got to spend last week in California, seeing people, doing things, from Irvine up to Sacramento, and people kept trying to get me to go with them to vineyards, though I no longer imbibe. I used to and then about 25 years ago I stopped. I am capable of idiocy on my own without adding intoxication to it. And I had a two-year-old daughter and I didn’t want her to see me drunk. She and I love silliness, which is a whole other matter.

I went to Modesto, home of Ernest and Julio Gallo wine, the wine I drank in my college days, the cheap wine in the gallon glass jug. You poured it into an ordinary drinking glass and drank it with dinner and either you liked it or you didn’t drink it but you didn’t sit and discuss it. Now I have friends, bless their hearts, who are connoisseurs of wine and who employ terms like “well-structured,” “buttery,” “complex,” “nicely restrained,” “autumnal,” “jam-flavored,” and “rangy,” which strikes me as complex well-structured hogwash. I am an alien in their midst. The only wine I taste now is from the Sunday morning communion cup, and I suppose it’s complex but I simply think of it as the blood of salvation.

Well, we live in a big democratic country where people speak freely so you don’t have to go far to be an alien. I’m an alien among Gen Zers when they talk digitalese. I tune in sports talk shows on TV to enjoy watching grown men shouting at each other about a game, meanwhile the planet is heating, Los Angeles is burning, and a party has taken power whose members are forbidden to speak the words “climate change.”

From Modesto I went to Lubbock, Texas, by way of Southwest Airlines, which encourages its flight attendants to do stand-up. Landed in Lubbock, and one of them said, “Be careful opening the overheads. Luggage can shift. Shift happens.”

I went to Lubbock to do a stand-up show myself at the Cactus Theater, and standing in the lobby it seemed to me that I was drawing a Baptist crowd. I asked an usher and she agreed with me. So I worked some hymns into the show, not hard for an old evangelical like me, and when I started into “It Is Well With My Soul” and they joined in full-voice, suddenly I wasn’t an alien anymore. I was among brethren and sistren. I was instantly at home. And then “How Great Thou Art.” It was powerful. Lubbock is Buddy Holly’s hometown and they also knew “Every day, it’s a-gettin’ closer, going faster than a roller coaster” and they knew “You know my love’ll not fade away.” And it won’t. I love Lubbock and I always will and I don’t care whom they voted for in November, those people are family. Their singing was not autumnal or rangy; it was heartfelt and harmonious.

Life is good, even when we’re alienated. We Democrats got skunked and so for the next four years, we’re free to savor life itself. The victor has proudly proclaimed his contempt for our traditions and institutions, which are alien to him. His faith is in himself.

Good luck with that.

I intend to enjoy defeat and go back and read Shakespeare, whom I wrote C-minus term papers about in college using terms like “well-structured,” “complex,” “buttery.” I’m going to travel to Dublin, Stockholm, Rome, where a person can become absorbed in the immediate surroundings, be engrossed in the moment. I want to hear The Marriage of Figaro again and the Fauré Requiem. I want to walk in the park with my sweetie and look at people and their dogs and the jazz musicians who congregate to jam. I want to pay attention to joyful outbursts of little kids astonished by ordinary things.

The country changes. Someday I will open the Lifestyle section of the newspaper and find reviews of macaroni and cheese (“impressive density” “refined finish,” “suave but structural”) and why not tap water (“earthy accents and savory character”). To which I say: What-EVer. I love the old hymns, face-to-face friendliness, good manners, the limerick, a walk in the park. Someday I hope to shake hands with the bishop who dared ask the Chief to show mercy in her prayer at the Cathedral on Monday.

I knew it could happen someway:
A bull rules the whole USA.
But life is riskable
And I’ll stay Episcopal
And live happily day to day.

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