| CHARLIE JAMES By Mance Lipscomb If you see Charlie James coming down the road, Well please don’t tell him which a-way you see me go; Had a whole lot of trouble since I saw you last, I don’t know my future, I sure won’t tell my past. Looked down the road far as I could see, And I thought I spied my old time used to be; I had a whole lot of money, one old sunshiny day, Next day I did not have a dime. If you see Charlie James coming down the road, Well please don’t tell him which a-way I go; Had a whole lot of trouble since I saw you last, I don’t know my future, I sure won’t tell my past. ---------------------------- To illustrate what it is like to have money one day and not the next, here is a story of how this can happen. Recently, at Christmas, Steve Mann received a sizeable amount of money as a gift from his loving sister Devorah; a single large bill enclosed in a letter. He spent the entire sum on lottery tickets, winning enough to reduce the total to about thirty per cent of what Devie had originally sent. Then he decided to go out on an Adventure with what little he had left. We heard about this story later. Finding a trans-bay bus in Oakland that took him all the way to the Greyhound Bus Station in San Francisco, Steve went out and spent the remains of his prize on an enormous pair of hiking boots from an army surplus store on Market Street. He went alone on this mission. He found his way back home the same day, in time for dinner, (carrying the boots in a bag) and could not explain how he got where he did since he doesn’t know the names of the streets. Steve, however, is the only male person I know who is willing to stop and ask for directions. That must be how he did it. He showed us the boots. No one has ever seen him actually wearing them, and in fact, he does not own them anymore. The entire episode completely consumed his gift in a single day, with the lottery tickets getting the lion’s share. But he did indeed have himself a Great Adventure. |