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Another Breakfast with Billy Wayne and Joe Eddie
Dateline September 30, 2024
Billy Wayne: What’s on your mind? You look like someone stole your secret Snickers stash.
Joe Eddy: Words.
Billy Wayne: Which words?
Joe Eddy: All of ’em.
Billy Wayne: Name a few.
Joe Eddy: All right. “Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose.”
Billy Wayne: Ah. Yes. Kristofferson died. Was it yesterday? How old was he?
Joe Eddy: Yes. Yesterday. He was 88.
Billy Wayne: He was a good songwriter, a fair-to-middlin’ singer, and a poor actor. I liked him, though.
Joe Eddy: He was one of the greatest lyricists in American history. No one turned a phrase any better.
Billy Wayne: Lyricist. Boy, you are into words this morning. So, he wrote Sunday Morning Coming Down, For the Good Times”¦oh, and the Bobby McGee song. What else?
Joe Eddy: He wrote 108 songs and never wasted a phrase in any of them.
Billy Wayne (sighing): Why me, Lord?
Joe Eddy: Yes, that was one of them.
Billy Wayne: No. I mean, why me, Lord! Why I gotta take my coffee with such a depressing conversation?
Joe Eddy (pointing): That table’s free.
Billy Wayne: Yeah, and what was it you said? Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.
Lucille the Waitress (warming their coffee): You boys solve the world yet or do I have to see you again tomorrow?
Joe Eddy: Tomorrow’s Sunday.
Lucille: That’s right. I meant Monday.
Billy Wayne (wryly): Ain’t nothin’ short of dyin’ half as lonesome as the sound as sittin’ here with Joe Eddy and Sunday Mornin’ comin’ down.
Lucille:
Joe Eddy:
Billy Wayne: I feel like you had more to say about words, so use your words and say it sometime before lunch.
Joe Eddy: Alright. What is the oldest quote you have committed to memory? How long ago is it from?
Billy Wayne (Studies coffee cup): Must be, I’d say, somethin’ from the Bible, like Solomon and that early to bed, early to rise thing.
Joe Eddy (shakes head and sighs): That was Benjamin Franklin, you idiot.
Billy Wayne: Still”¦
Joe Eddy: So, here are my thoughts. Words live on. If a word is spoken to the right audience at the right time and in the right way, it may live forever. Long after the speaker is forgotten. Long after anyone remembers who they were or what they did or why, as in Ben Franklin and Solomon, someone is still putting their words onto things like LinkedIn, Memes, coffee cups, and t-shirts.
Billy Wayne: Is that your whole point?
Joe Eddy: My point is we say them flippantly. We discard them like an empty milk carton. Or, we toss them like confetti into the air, never realizing that they are the greatest, longest-lasting, most empowering, or most devastating force on earth. Wars commence and end on them. So do marriages. Words, man. They matter. They live and breathe long after we are gone. Our kids carry them to their kids and they to theirs to a thousand generations.
Billy Wayne (checking watch): Look at the time. I gave my word I would fix that leaky faucet today. Those are words I must live by. I will have to weigh yours in the pickup.
Lucille (collecting the cups with an exaggerated sigh): And the world’s problems go unsolved. See you boys Monday.
Billy Wayne (winking at Joe Eddy and throwing up the peace sign like a gangster): Word.
1Second in the series Breakfast with Billy Wayne and Joe Eddy
2One of the short stories in the collection I am writing, called Character of the Song is Tilly Rae and the Rainbow Cafe, inspired by the lyrics of Kristofferson’s Here Comes that Rainbow Again. After reading a scene in John Steinbeck’sGrapes of Wrath, Kris was inspired to write the song.
And the daylight was heavy with thunder
With the smell of the rain on the wind
Ain’t it just like a human?
Here comes that rainbow again
Billy Wayne and Joe Eddy are characters inspired by two men I saw one morning while having coffee with my grandfather. Since they are fictional, I reserve the right to put them into any era but always in the morning over coffee with Lucille attending to them. Here is the first in the series, if you want context.
Tilly Rae and the Rainbow Cafe, a short story, is available in ebook format only.