Acquitted, not innocent

There is a saying out here in Real Texas about older men.

Don’t mess with them. If they are too old to fight you, they will just shoot you.

Billy Joe Shaver was acquitted last week by a McLennan County, Texas jury in the 2007 shooting of Billy Coker. Coker allegedly (from my old newspaper days) threatened Shaver with a knife and Shaver shot him in the face out in the parking lot.

Among those attending the trial in support of Shaver was Robert Duvall and Willie Nelson. Willie has called Billy Joe Shaver possibly the best songwriter alive today. Shaver was defended by noted attorney Dick DeGuerin.

I once saw an old man kick another man in the butt. It was in the local coffee shop and the younger man had made a disparaging remark the older man took offense to. As the younger man went up to the register, the older man, probably about 80, went up and delivered a pretty powerful blow with his right foot. He then just walked out the door with not another word said. I was impressed. And it was a lesson learned.

I’ll bet Billy Coker was impressed also. Maybe he learned a lesson.

Billy Joe has been acquitted, but he is not innocent. Let him tell you a little about that with his own words taken from his website:

“When you get right down to it, country music is essentially the blues, and that night introduced me to the blues. In the years since then, they’ve never left me. I’ve lost parts of three fingers, broke my back, suffered a heart attack and a quadruple bypass, had a steel plate put in my neck and 136 stitches in my head, fought drugs and booze, spent the money I had, and buried my wife, son, and mother in the span of one year.

But I’m not here to complain or ask for pity. Life is hard for everybody, just in different ways. I’m not proud of my misfortune—I’m proud of my survival. For years, my family kept a bundle of life insurance on me because they were sure I would be the first to go. But as I write this, at sixty-four years of age, I’m still here and they are all gone.

The question is—why? That’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.”

One of his statements kinda sticks with me. It’s that Country Music is essentially the Blues. But it’s my kind of blues………..