Texas Angel

James Hunter. Richard Lowrie. Sam Baker. These men perform a morbid ballet of sorts in my head tonight. This trifecta has come inexplicably together to teach me a few things about life.

I first met James when I was a teacher at Firelands High School. He and I walked the same dingy halls, cursing the Tostado Pizza Day every Wednesday in the cafeteria and the grotesque animal odors coming from the Ag Science room. Although I never had him in class, I knew of his love for his family military tradition and his inquisitive nature. But fate intervened with his plans for a lifelong military career when he was killed this week in Afghanistan on his third tour of duty, serving as his unit’s photojournalist.

Last night I went out to forget. It seems I’ve waited a lifetime to meet one of Texas’ gems, singer-songwriter Sam Baker. Okay, it’s only been a year. But when his haunting, seasoned voice began, I knew that his music had the power to do more than just entertain.

“There’s a soldier. He’s in the way of harm. A girl holds a baby in a blanket in her arms. Boys laugh. Boys play.” Figures he would play “Baseball” first. It was difficult to listen to these words on the heels of the loss of yet another soldier. But somehow comforting as well. “Another Saturday comes and goes.” And life continues to blow.

The man and his music have power all right. I’m not sure if it’s the Texas boots and swagger or the piercing blue eyes or the way he closes his eyes to let the songs envelop him, but to watch Sam Baker play is to watch a man who is breathing life from every moment. And well he should. He almost didn’t make it himself. Caught on a train many years ago that was blown-up by terrorists, he watched those nearby him die and sustained many life-threatening injuries. The surgeries healed his body and I’m pretty sure the music healed his soul.

I know it was working on me last night.

Earlier in the day I had heard another story that was disturbing me. Richard Lowrie, an eighty-six year old man and husband for three and a half decades, was killed in a bizarre accident at a McDonald’s drive-thru. News accounts say he had gone to get his wife a cup of decaf coffee, dropped his glasses out of the window, and crushed himself when he reached out the door to retrieve them and accidentally hit the accelerator. A lifetime of love was shattered in an instant.

Sam had a song for that too. “Waves” tells the story of a man who has lost his wife of fifty years and goes to the ocean to write her name in the sand. The waves wash it away. “So many years, so many hardships. So many laughs, so many tears. So many things to remember. ‘Cause they had 50 years.” The first time you hear this song takes your breath away. And every subsequent time makes you want to breathe forever. And find true love.

Another song starts with a woman with a limp. “Don’t worry. It all turns out okay,” Sam chides the audience. And that is what strikes me about the music this night. He’s got the stories of the huddled masses. The good, the bad, and the ugly. He’s experienced it himself, and he’s a confessor who hears peoples’ stories at gigs throughout the country. These stories are his songs. And they aren’t always pretty. But they are always powerful.

James, Richard, Sam: these three men meld in my head. Like Dicken’s classic, they are my specters come to teach the lessons I need for the journey. And it reminds me of the song “Angels” that I didn’t get to hear Sam sing, but that speaks to his music and my own melancholy: “They ease all suffering. They heal all pain. Her angels come like healing rain. Love and angels conquer all.”

And the trick is to recognize the angels by their cowboy boots.