I’m listening to the unreleased recordings of Hank Williams, who some of you may now know is the singer I grew up with during my dark years right after we moved from a small town in New York to Ferndale and the new Mobile Refinery at Cherry Point.

There are few singers who have ever reached the passion and sadness in their songs as Williams did. His recordings today sell as big as they did when he was alive, and his career at its peak only lasted four years because he died on New Year’s Day 1953 while en route to a gig in Canton, Ohio.

Williams was just 29.

The “new” old recordings, which were saved from the garbage at Tennessee radio station WSM, have been remastered. They are incredible recordings, but the one that moves me the most is one I have heard many times – Pictures From Life’s Other Side.

This recording gives us a glimpse of Williams’ sad life, but it also made me pause about my own life. As I listen, I can visualize snapshots from my own side of life. It starts with me holding my favorite friend, my dog Peanuts, back as I open the screen to our wrap-around porch at our old home back in New York. I’m about 8 and I’m anxious to head out up the road on my fenderless bike to see what is happening in our small town, hoping to get wrapped up in a pickup baseball game.

I make it out the screen door and I’m up highway 17 about a quartermile when I suspect somebody is watching me. I turn and there is Peanuts trailing about 50 yards behind me. I stop and tell her to go home. She drops her head, looks at me, and then slowly turns to go back home.

Inside, I’m crying. I can’t do this. I can’t go without her. So I call out, “Peanuts, c’mon,” and she quickly turns back and runs full gallop to my side. It’s a wonderful snapshot, me barefoot, a beaten-up bike, and a faithful dog who I have never forgotten. We walk side-by-side because now I can’t ride my bike and tire her out as she tries to keep up. But I would have it no other way. If only we could do it one more time. Thanks Peanuts, for being, well, for being you. l love you ... still.

Hour-after-hour I’m the little boy on the Allegheny River dike, hitting stones with a stick into the river and beyond. I never tire of it. The summer sun beats down but it doesn’t beat me. There is a stillness that is unreal, just the sound of rock hitting stick, splashing into the Allegheny.

Finally, I sit down and take in the beauty, Old Baldy, looming in front of me, a hill that I and my friends conquer over and over, and the slowly moving Allegheny lazily heading toward the Pennsylvania border just a mile away.

A hawk circles above me, looking for something to eat. As I watch, the day blends into nothingness, a scene where there is no worries, no responsibilities, no troubles, no fears, no nothing.

The snapshot now is just a dusty postcard, a postcard from the past.

It is the middle 1950s and I am a fish out of a pond. A new life 3,000 miles from home in a house where I’m not wanted. I’ve gone from the dreamy kid on the dike to the nightmare teenager with no place to rest, no one to share hidden thoughts, no Peanuts to hold me tight and love me unconditionally.

I stumble into the woods, wander off into forbidden territory never seen before. I emerge a confused child, hurting inside, crying for help that is not heard. The raging Nooksack River is in its spring mood, angry as it whips around corners, tearing at sod and trees.

As I sat there with this swirling turmoil in front of me, I wonder if I can swim from one side to the other. Is it better to turn around and go back to a loveless home or better to take the chance?

The question never gets answered, not fully. I never test the Nooksack. But I’m tested every day at home for the next four years.

I fail them all.

I finally find some peace in the early 1960s solitude of Wilson Library on Western Washington’s campus. The snapshot has me moving stealthy among the history books, finding solace among the words of some of the great men of our time. Their words move me to want to do good things, and my inner turmoil wanes, pushing me off to short naps, my head lying upon their words in a small corner of Wilson, free from whatever haunts me.

A few years later, back from Oklahoma for a short holiday break, I’m sitting with my second cousin Dave in a cowboy bar, beer in hand, eluding the wintry blasts from the Northeast. Destiny will arrive soon. It will rescue me from my nightmare. This had been planned long before.

A snapshot from fifth grade. Sitting in Mrs. Waterman’s class, third seat, second row from the door. Martha Jean in front of me and today I don’t tease her.

Martha Jean will wind up one day with a doctorate degree, and head up a nursing program at a major college. This day, she is safe from the 9-year-old boy in back of her.

But the boy is not safe.

Soon comes the words, telepathically planted in the boy’s mind. Not that he understands on this day what telepathically means, but he clearly hears the words “You will marry Mary.”

What 9-year-old boy is worried about getting married? This one is more concerned about pulling Martha Jean’s hair, or beating her at jacks during lunch. But the words are as clear now as then: You will marry Mary.

Sitting two rows over, two seats behind me, is Mary. Gangly, tall, she is somebody who is not well-liked within the class. But she is there. God, what are you doing to me? I ask.

Now it is 17 years later, and the snapshot clearly shows the door of the cowboy bar opening. In comes two girls, one short, the other tall wearing a long black coat against the fierce Northeasterly blowing down I-5, the freeway that rolls by the bar.

Dave says he will take the tall one. I quickly set him straight. No, she is mine

Destiny has arrived. I quickly introduce myself, the two girls join us, and over 40 years later me and the tall girl are still together.

Christmas Day, she opened her gift from me and our two young kids. The snapshot has come full circle. She stands before the mirror, adjusting herself. It’s the same scene I saw at the cowboy bar.

The long, black coat looks great to me.

The tall one smiles back.

Mary is happy.

Not all the snapshots are happy ones. Sadness is part of the life we live. And now as the camera rolls, the snapshots of pictures from life’s other side show an aging man who has hit a wall.

As the Nooksack roars, as Old Baldy shakes the cold and snow from its top, as the Allegheny quietly moves on down toward the Pennsylvania border, the old man looks to the heavens and wonders if he will he be greeted by his first love when he gets there.

Peanuts.

Have a great month.

You are loved.