by Wilbur Witt
Back in '94 I got up one Sunday morning in my office on Westend Avenue in Nashville. I'd done a show at Pennington's Lounge out on Briley Expressway the night before, and ended the night, or rather welcomed the morning, at the Nashville Palace eating catfish. My Nashville experience was dragging along like so many others. I had an album, but is was comedy, and I was still going head to head with the heavy hitters on Music Square. I hadn't come to the realization as yet that the album I'd cut as a joke would end up being my saving grace. My serious songs simply would not sell, and I simply would not accept that. The people on the Square wouldn't even accept a copy of my latest love song, but they would PAY for a copy of my funny ones.
I left the building and began to work my way down Westend to Shoney's where they had a cheap breakfast, which was nice because it fit right in with songwriters like me. As I walked I heard the bells from the Westend Catholic Church ringing in the distance, and the line from an old Johnny Cash classic came to me, "Down the road I heard a lonely church bell ringing." As I crossed the street there was a little park, near the Country Music Hall Of Fame, and in that park, just like the song, there was a man swinging a laughing little girl. I stopped.
The man who brought me to Nashville had two daughters. They were both under five years old. The older one was chubby, and made great sport of pushing her younger, smaller sister around. He lived just off Music Square so I easily walked over to his house and asked if I could take the youngest to breakfast. Soon she was riding on my shoulders on her way to Shoney's. When we got there I sat her down and told her she could eat anything she wanted. Her older sister would steal from her plate at every chance. She looked around and saw the food buffet.
"I want eggs."
"That's all?" I asked her.
"Yes."
"You can have anything you want."
"I want all the eggs in the world!"
She ate eggs for an hour. I took her home. Time and years went by. In 2010 this same little girl was living with me. She had a horrendous marriage to my son which cost her all of her children. The emotional roller coaster ride had landed her in the state hospital. She had lived in alleys in Detroit, and mansions in Austin, but to look at her you couldn't tell it. After the kids, her husband, and my wife were gone we found ourselves living together in the lonely big house in Berry Creek she called it a "Pretty Prison." She had been quite successful on Youtube, but by now the muse had fled, and she was a broken, lonely young mother, missing her life
One morning I decided to treat her. I told her I wanted to take her to breakfast at IHop! She'd never been to an IHop, and was very excited. She even got dressed for the occasion. A girl that ate at a country club was beside herself about a trip to IHop!
We walked in and she looked at the menu. I told her the cafe was famous for its pancakes. What would she like? She looked up from the menu and said, "I want all the eggs in the world."
"You remember that?"
"Yes."
I sat there and enjoyed watching iJackie eating, "all the eggs in the world."
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