How I Met Your Father

For Tambrey Ringer Kinley

I never told you about my good friend, Danny "Boone" Patton.

Our parents were friends; hangin' out, card playin' buddies.

Boone was the same age as my sister Brenda and from a young age, after he got his first guitar, it was quite apparent that this boy could play.

And so he would play and I (not yet being the guitar prodigy that I am now) would sing. In fact if it was on the radio, we could probably perform it.

Anyway, years passed and we got to be plumb-growed boys in our twenties with families of our own when we began to get together again and play (I had a guitar by this time and could second  my friend).

Sometimes we gathered together with family. but lots of times it would just be us two.

We would pop by one another's house with a "Have you heard this one?" or a "This is a cool song."

And so we were sitting in my bedroom one afternoon playing an Eagles song, "Peaceful Easy Feelin'" maybe or one of those.

And my sister Deb appears in the doorway with a strange fella in tow. She introduces him and leaves him with us while she wanders off to hang with my wife and kids.

Paul, his name was, sat on the bed with us and asked if we minded his singing along with the Eagles tune, we had been playing.

Sure, we said, not having heard this guy sing or even knowing if he could sing.

We commenced and when he opened his mouth to sing, we nearly fell off our guitars. Paul could sing.

Anyhow we now had us a lead singer so to speak, and when Deb and Boone and I would blend our voices with his, the harmonies were amazing.

And I'm not bragging, you can ask anybody who ever heard us.

Matter of fact, even if nobody had ever heard us play, it was just a blast to play together.

Boone was already an honorary Tolar. He was "make you laugh your drink through your nose" funny.

Paul was adopted immediately and we built quite a repertoire of songs, though we never performed publicly per se, just with friends, and at family gatherings.

And I think each of us felt it, the joy of making music together, the sheer fun and silliness of it.

Fine times. After I moved away, the times weren't nearly so frequent but no matter the length of time gone by, there was never a time when we got back together and it was as though we had stepped out of the room ("a pause for the cause," you might say)for a moment and simply returned to pick up our guitars to play some more. 

The last time I went to visit Paul, we played. Or I played, on his Charvel acoustic-electric with the cherry sunburst finish, and he sang, every one of the old songs we could remember, our voices still blending in as sweet  a sound as always.

Not a lot of precise detail in the Bible about heaven. But I can't help thinking, God having given us the gift of music, that along with the new songs we are promised there will be time enough throughout eternity to break out the guitars and sing some of the old ones as well.