South Boston

She comes down from Yellow Mountain
On a dark flat land she rides
On a pony she named Wildfire
With a whirlwind by her side
On a cold Nebraska night

Do you remember this classic song from the '70s? It is titled Wildfire, about a girl who dies in a blizzard while searching for her horse. Sung by Michael Murphey, who was pretty much a one-hit wonder. Can you hear it?

She ran calling Wildfire!
She ran calling Wildfire!
She ran calling Wildfire!

I was on one of those three-hour rides between Virginia and North Carolina this afternoon--the drive that has become so mundane that I usually load my ipod with books and podcasts to keep me occupied. This afternoon, though, I was just scanning the radio dial when I heard the opening notes to this song, and I stopped. Instanteously I was transported to the house where my family lived when I was a teenager, and I was lying on my single bed, holding the microphone to my cassette tape player near the FM radio speaker, waiting for the DJ to play my request...Wildfire.

Oh they say she died one winter
When there came a killin' frost
And the pony she name Wildfire
Busted down his stall
In a blizzard he was lost

Isn't it amazing how a memory can do that to you? As the song played, I reached for pen and paper and wrote a reminder to myself to download it to my ipod. It would be the perfect addition to my "favorites" collection (alongside David Cassidy and Carole King).

By the dark of the moon I planted
But there came an early snow
There's been a hoot owl howlin' by my window now
For six nights in a row
She's coming for me I know
And on Wildfire we're both gonna go

On these many trips between Virginia and North Carolina, I have passed several exits to South Boston. And I always believed that the closing lines to this song said:

On wildfire we're gonna ride, oh
We're gonna leave South Boston behind
Get these hard times right on out of our minds
Riding Wildfire

So, today, the mundane trip took on a new interest as I convinced myself that I had a few extra minutes to check out South Boston. As I approached Danville, I took the first South Boston exit, and the road signs indicated it was 29 miles away. Well, that was a little more of a detour than I truly wanted to take, but the adventure was already in control. As I exited the city limits of Danville, there were rolling hills, beautiful homes in the distance, and many horse farms. I could just picture the blizzard, the barn, the beautiful pony, and the girl getting lost in the snow. I was trying to maintain a reasonable speed limit, but I was also quite excited to be visiting this special place mentioned in the closing lines of this haunting song.

With every mile I traveled, though, the horse farms disappeared--one by one--and the rolling hills became flat land, until I felt like I wasn't in Virginia anymore. On the horizon I couldn't see Yellow Mountain; I had never even heard of Yellow Mountain. But I could see South Boston, and I was quite excited about perusing its countryside and quaint city streets only a few miles ahead.

Now, for any of you who may hold South Boston near and dear to your heart, I am pre-empting this paragraph with an apology. I am sorry, but South Boston was a major disappointment. I had driven 29 miles off the beaten path to visit this mystical place mentioned in the closing lines of my favorite song from the '70s only to find a deteriorating downtown, a Sheets gas station, and a few other strip shopping centers. If there is a historic or quaint part of South Boston (and I'm sure there is), I didn't find it. I also didn't find any semblance of a horse farm where Wildfire could have escaped his barn. All in all, it was quite a disappointing trip.

During the round trip to South Boston and the tour I took of its city and outer limits, I had spent a lot of time and a lot of gas and was driving home very disappointed. At one time I had even entertained living in South Boston, i.e., the place made famous by Michael Murphy's song. But, based on what I had witnessed today, that would not be happening.

When I finally got home, I started working through my to-do list--a part of which was downloading the song Wildfire. And, as I am a creature of habit (some would say OCD, but isn't that a bit harsh?), here's the "download music" routine: Download complete, play song, go to lyricsondemand to follow lyrics with song (and sing along if I'm in the mood). Imagine my surprise when I realized that for almost thirty years I have misunderstood the closing lines to the song. It wasn't about South Boston--especially South Boston, Virginia. Duh, "she comes down Yellow Mountain . . . on a cold Nebraska night." The actual lyrics are:

On wildfire we're gonna ride, oh
We're gonna leave sod-bustin' behind
Get these hard times right on out of our minds
Riding Wildfire

Sod-bustin' not South Boston. Oh . . . well, that changes everything.

I am pregnant

Shocking title, huh? Well, since you haven't heard of me slitting my wrists, you can safely assume this is a theoretical pregnancy rather than an actual pregnancy.

As a sidebar, I have about six blogs circulating in my head right now. Unfortunately, I do not have time to write them all (unless this insomnia continues [another blog topic]), but I am hoping to post a blog about the trip to Greece, so don't think that I've forgotten that.

This pregnancy actually occurred in Greece where I was taking a class on Global Apologetics. At the beginning of a class, the prof randomly started talking about writing his first book, and he used the phrase "being pregnant" with the book. He described this process for at least fifteen minutes, and I was hanging on his every word. One of the most memorable things he said was, "It didn't matter how many books I sold; all that mattered was that the book was born because I knew in my being that it had to be born or a part of me would die." He then went on to say, " 'Writing your first manuscript' is not the topic for today's class, but I just felt compelled to share that story with you because someone in here is pregnant with a book." Oh, professor, that 'someone' is me.

Anyone who has known me for more than twenty-four hours knows that I love to write. I write verses, I write devotionals, I obviously write a lot of legal briefs and legal articles.

This blog was born out of my desire to write about this adventure called law school. But there is more inside of me than an occasional blog post. Even as the prof was talking about "being pregnant" with his first book, I could name no less than three books that I have inside me that I would love to--and need to--write. And, like the prof, whether I sale a single copy is not as important as birthing the book--saying what needs to be said.

Last night I listened to Rick Warren talk about the seven months he spent writing The Purpose Driven Life. His daily routine for seven months was to wake up every morning at 4:30, be writing by 5:00 a.m., stop one hour for lunch, and write until 5:00 p.m.; and he did this every day for seven months. He said he didn't know that he was writing a book that would become the best selling hardback book of all time worldwide (the only book in history that has outsold Rick Warren's book is the Bible), but he did know that he was writing something special. He said there were many days he would be writing while the tears flowed down his face, and all he was was the conduit for the book that had to be born. He explicity said he knew this wasn't his creation, but that something divine had impregnated him with this book.

The third year of law school is not conducive to being pregnant--literally or theorectically. And then there's the bar exam, and the job search, and the list goes on. But, amongst all the ohter things that I know I must do now--now that my head is clear--I know that I must birth this book--these books--or a part of me will die. It may be a year or it may be a decade before these books are born; but they are kicking inside me, and I am excited about this pregnancy.