Even Cowboys Get the Blues

 

"Death is just nature's way of telling you to slow down." 

--Tom Robbins, July 22, 1932 - February 9, 2025

We were driving back home from Bellingham on Sunday along I-5 and we drove by the exit that would take you to La Connor, Washington. I said to my wife, "I wonder if Tom Robbins still lives in La Connor."  Then I asked ChatGPT and it told me that Tom Robbins died on February 9, 2025 at the age of 92 in La conner.

I don't know what shocked me more, that Tom Robbins was dead, he was 92 or that I hadn't heard about it. Because if you were to ask me who my favorite author was I would have immediately told you Tom Robbins. And if you live under a rock, Tom Robbins wrote amazing novels like Another Roadside Attraction, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, Jitterbug Perfume and Still Life Woodpecker. He was weird. He was eccentric and he was profound. I wanted to write like him.

I saw Tom Robbins two times in my life. Once he was at a Darrel P. Huston Memorial Writing Award gig at the Blue Moon Tavern in Seattle's U-District. And the other time he was speaking at the University of Washington.  He was my idol. But I never actually met him or spoke with him. I did feel like I knew him well. And his novels spoke to me. 

So finding out he was dead and ancient while I still pictured him holding court at the Blue Moon or banging away on an electric typewriter in La Conner was a major downer. I bought what I believe was his last published book: Tibetan Peach Pie: A True Account of an Imaginative Life. It came out in 2014.  It was a reflection on his life. I read part of it but never finished it. It is somewhere around here. 

I read most of Tom Robbins earlier books in the 1980s. It was a formative time for me. I was searching and wondering and longing for something. And Tom Robbins books spoke to me. I wanted to be like him and pen these amazing stories and ideas. The closest I ever came was persistently writing this blog despite the lack of readers and recognition. Tom Robbins gave me hope. He did it and I knew so could I.

I desperately wanted to sit down and talk with him. I wanted to impress him with my weird wit and own eccentric spirit. I even fantasized that he would stumble on my blog and reach out to me. 

That never happened. I feel as though my writing was one of his scenes on an abandoned Interstate that the world passed by. But still, I believed I had that spark that Tom Robbins would have recognized.

And now he is dead.  And this Cowboy has got the blues.