I have an old Gibson Epiphone guitar my second wife bought me because she didn’t want me breakin’ her Alvarez.

I’ve been draggin’ her around for years just ‘bong chinginin’ away whenever I could find somebody to tune her for me.

I call her Bonnie, after Bonnie Parker of Bonnie & Clyde infamy, mostly because Thelma and Louise are already taken by my pickup and car. My friend Burt Baldwin put a tunin’ on her a while back and I’ve been jammin’ my little hiney off. Havin’ more fun than a dog rollin’ in a dead skunk.

Music, art and literature, amazing huh? I have to be honest and say I never paid much attention to them before now. The folks at the Herald and you folks readin’ have blown the barn door plumb off of my mind and opened it up to some really cool stuff and I’d like to say thanks.

I have discovered that my thoughts, and all the stuff that rolls around in my head in a day, is unique, and it’s supposed to be. It’s what makes me, me. That bein’ said, then the same thing must be so for you. Instead of tryin’ real hard to fit in to the mold society has pre-arranged for us, how cool is it to just say “ Naw, I’m good just like I am.”

It makes bein’ less judgmental easier. We’re all just cruisin’ along life’s highway tryin’ to do the best we can each day. Some days better than others, but it seems to even itself out if we stay the course. Life is big, and it’s supposed to be, each one unique to the owner.

Read a book by an author you don’t know today, try a new type of food, listen to some music that’s new to you and if you get the chance, introduce yourself to someone that doesn’t look like you. All change isn’t bad, it’s just change.

Thanks to you all for enlarging my mind and my world.

Woody Guthrie sang it best; “This land is your land, this land is my land.”

Tom James was riding horses before he could walk. He currently hangs his hat in Ignacio. Reach him at outlivedthemallsofar@gmail.com. The topknot, by the way, is the last knot tied on a pack saddle.