The Inspiration for "Nothing Was Important Until Everything Was"

An estrellita from a music museum in La Paz

I started this story in November 2022 when we were still living near Grecia in Costa Rica. It is one of the poems included in the first collection SLOW DESCENT AND OTHER LITTLE STORIES.

If anybody from Brownwood reads this story, you will recognize many of the settings. I took a little poetic license with some of it but not that much.

Brownwood had a country club, named aptly the Brownwood Country Club. It was located a little south of the town and when we were in our teens in the 1960s, it was easy to access it at night. After you entered the property in a vehicle, you could reach the ninth hole green by following a little road behind the lake and the dam. I had a battery-operated turntable from which you could remove the top. This top doubled as stereo speakers. My good friend Van Wilks and I, along with other friends, spent many weekend nights playing vinyl albums at a spectacularly high volume from that little unit. Apparently, we were far enough away from civilization because not a soul every inquired as to what the hell we were doing blasting music on the ninth hole green in the middle of the night. The first verse of this poem derives directly from that experience.

Lake Brownwood is a very large lake by central Texas standards (close to a 100 mile shoreline) , and entry points are located throughout the county. Another favorite pastime for teens in the 60s was lounging around the lake and skiing or riding an inner tube behind a boat. More harmless fun described in the second verse.

Poetic license here - there was a Camp Bowie and there was a tank. We certainly road bicycles before we could drive and, during my few years of casual smoking, I did smoke Kools. There was a large train station in Brownwood with trains constantly passing through with distant whistles heard throughout the day and night. There was an area of town called Bluffview but maybe no train bridge there. Still, all of these pieces came together to form the third verse.

As drugs began to occupy more of our time and attention, we found another hangout, Riverside Park. When we were not on the ninth hole green at the country club, we might be found at Riverside Park. This park was right off one of the main highways on the outskirts of town, Anywhere from five to a dozen of us might hang out in the park on any night until the wee hours of the morning. Again, I do not recall any police or anybody else for that matter ever bothering us or inquiring about what we were doing. In this instance maybe not so much "harmless" fun, but fun nonetheless and the setting for the fourth verse of this poem.

There were girls and they did begin to catch our eye more and more each year once we turned 16 or so. The attention and attraction to those young ladies did completely disrupt our regular activities sometimes breaking a member indefinitely off from the group. That explains the final verse.