I have a good friend named Bubba that’s a pretty good guitar player and song writer. Bubba is an athletic trainer like me but he lives in Kansas City so I only get to see him once or twice a year at our yearly athletic training conventions.

We always bring our guitars with to the conventions for some pickin', grinin', and general song butchering. Thanks to a little rum the butchering gets worse as the night progresses, but thanks to a little rum we don’t generally notice or care. Sometimes we work on new songs, sometimes we play old ones, mostly we laugh like idiots.

Bubba was hiking in Nebraska last year and came upon an old headstone that had an epitaph that read: “Ordinary I Wasn’t Wild I Was.” This inspired Bubba to write a song titled “No Ordinary Life,” which I would like to share with you.

I found the old man asleep in his chair
Just like I had done the past twenty years
But this time was different for he did not rise
I knew he was gone to the other side

Laid out on the table next to his chair
Was an album of photos with a letter in there
The album was full of photos and such
But under each one he had written so much

What I found on that day was no ordinary man
But a man of conviction who had taken a stand
Some were of family, work and of strife
But none of a man with an ordinary life

Chorus:

Ordinary I wasn’t, wild I was
A man’s measured by what he doesn’t do, not by what he does
Chase all your dreams, always do what is right
And don’t you go living an ordinary life

The first photo was him, little sister in tow
His clothes were too big, his shoes were too old
“Out in Kansas Somewhere” the picture it read
During the depression, before daddy was dead

The next was of him and the 101st
Labeled 1944, December 31st (spoken)
The snow was piled high and the men looked pretty bad
But there stood Jim smil’n with his rifle in hand

Another was taken on a large ship at sea
Hauling freight from the gulf up the Mississippi
Next was a mountain with him at the base
Titled “This time tomorrow, I’ll touch outer space”

The next was a bar that I’d seen many times
Titled “Grand Opening, 42nd