I am going to a friends 80th birthday party today. I’m in charge of the music. It’s a playlist he and I began putting together back in the 80s when the medium of choice was cassette tapes, and I was planning a Mardi Gras party. The music was on two cassettes, and we even printed out a complete list of the songs. The tapes were a hit, the party was a hit, and a picture of my oldest son dancing with his maw-maw is on the wall in my front room. Today I just have to monitor a tablet.

This friend goes all the way back to 1975 when we bought our first house in Pasadena. He and his wife lived next door to my mother-in-law who lived just down the street from us. Now he lives just down the road from me on the way to Blanco. His big hobby is collecting recordings of number one songs. It goes all the way back to the beginning. And he was the first guy I knew who owned his own computer, a Commodore 64, to house the database to keep track of all that musical goodness. In college at UT, he ran an underground radio station from his dorm, and today he’s got a full blown recording studio built in his barn. I record there on occasion.

I pay him back by helping out. We’ve built pole barns, fences, hung barn doors, and put on concerts in that barn. It’s been fun. When my wife was sick, we scheduled regular dinners at each other’s homes so that she could feel connected to her old friends. After she passed away in 2020 they made sure to stay in touch and have me over for visits and dinners. It still continues and now there’s a birthday to celebrate and there will be music. Happy birthday, Larry.