“She looks good for her age.”

“He’s held up well.”

For some reason too many young squirts automatically think that with age comes decline. Broken down bodies. Sunken faces. Unkempt hair. Out-of-date clothing. Haggard, withered, wrinkled, gaunt, exhausted, worn-down, faded blooms from the bush of life. Is that what age does to people?

Does it cripple spirits, slump shoulders, darken eyes, and wrap us in hopelessness? Maybe, but it doesn’t have to be that way, does it? Can’t a woman or man look good instead of just “for her/his age”? Can’t senior citizens’ lives be just as exciting as those in middle age? I hope so.

Who made me think of such a topic? George Strait did.

As I was glued to the Artist of the Decade tribute to the other man in my life, Guy walked through the room, glanced at the TV and said, “Ole George is showing his age.” (He is fifty-six.) Did he have to say that? Why wasn’t he in the kitchen eating something?

I did not see what Guy obviously saw. Instead, I saw the shy grin, the blue eyes, the black hat, the charisma —one hunk of mature man.

“Ole George is showing his age WELL.” I shot back.

I am not just a fan of George Strait, I am an own the entire CD and cassette collection fan. I once wrote Oprah, when she had one of those make your dream come true shows, that my greatest desire (of unimportant magnitude) was to meet George Strait. She did not make my dream come true, so in the summer of 2005, I set out (with three of my friends) to take care of matters myself. It happened this way.

After I’d been at my son Jon’s home in Austin for three weeks after the birth of their second child, three of my friends flew down to ride home with me and to see a little of the Lone Star State. Our first stop was the San Marcos outlet mall. At the designated time to meet, one of the girls, overwhelmed with newfound information, announced to us sweating on the bench, “Guess what George Strait lives close to here!”

She described the location, according to a clerk in one of the stores whom she interrogated, and soon we were racing to the car and following the path she described. What was “close to here” turned out to be a “far piece.”

We were looking for a place called Old Dominion. We headed toward San Antonio down I-35 and took a turn that led us to a dead end so we stopped at a convenient store for more directions. We followed another loop and off on another path that wrapped around Six Flags over somewhere. One of the passengers wanted to stop. “We don’t have time,” the rest of us shouted. We were on a mission.

“I think we’re circling,” I stated from behind the wheel. We were deep in the heart of Texas with no sign of any area that looked like a place where George would hang his hat. We eased off the road at a local honky tonk/restaurant, dust flying as if we had ridden in on horses, and asked some good ole boys who were bellied up to the bar, “Do you know where Old Dominion is?” They did.

After four hours of circling, they had pointed us in the right direction. In just minutes from there, we found it! We didn’t know what we had found, but a sign led us to “Old Dominion.”

Following yet another path, this one was toward the pot of gold. It led straight to George Strait —sort of.