Today, as most days are when I’ve just returned from a trip, has been spent trying to catch up. A friend of mine, Carol Murdoch, a writer with an award winning blog, sent me a book, Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb. It arrived today and I can’t wait to get to reading it! I had a grand time last Saturday in Lake Jackson, Texas at the Historic Museum there and will post some good photos when they arrive of that event. I found a new route from Monroe to Houston that is not much further than going to the west side of Fort Worth, so I’ll likely be planning more trips there. Of personal interest were the statues I passed this trip: the small memorial to Jim Reeves on Highway 79, the HUGE statues of Sam Houston (77 ft. high, including base at I-45 Huntsville) and Stephen Austin (Highway 288, 76 ft. high). I also booked a coffee shop for a musical program at a mall in Sherman, Texas and a couple of bookstores and libraries.

JEFF TALMADGE

If Jeff Talmadge isn’t a poet, then I truly don’t know what one is. His songs are constructed with lyrics that can scald or soothe the heart and reflect the voice of experience and wonderfully deep insights into human nature. Here is a song of his about “choices,” entitled, “Wrong Train.”

Wrong Train by Jeff Talmadge

On a train between two cities
I knew that I’d gone wrong
I was headed east
When I should be going west.

And I must have muttered something
‘cause the man beside me smiled
He looked me in the eye
And then he said

CHORUS:
It’s not the wrong train that you’re on
It’s just another way to go.
It’s not the wrong train that you’re on
And you found another way back home.

Well I’ll change at the next station
I said to my new friend
I’m losing time and it’s getting kind of late.

It isn’t lost, he said,
It’s only spent another way
And time is like this train
And it won’t wait.

CHORUS:
And this train don’t care if it’s wrong or if it’s right
But you’re where you ought to be tonight.

Well I finally made it home that night
Not quite the way I planned
Isn’t that the way
It always goes

And now when I get lost
I say I’m just exploring
‘cause life’s a whole lot
like that train I know.

CHORUS:

You found another way back home