(DADGAD)
Nov. 1995 - Feb. 3, 1996: a period of my life when I worked construction. I was an Electrician’s Assistant at the time working alongside my music buddy, Kevin Smith. The dream of playing music for a living was still a distant one for us. Here I was the proud new owner of a 4-year History degree from Louisiana State University with no career leanings and certainly no hints of a professional career engaging that particular degree. A word I soon added to my vocabulary was that of “unemployable”. I took the job thanks to a very generous and lenient boss. We were allowed to take time off whenever we needed to go play shows, no questions asked. So there we were: Ridgely the acoustic duet, pulling wires, pushing brooms, fetching conduit, fetching tools and fetching lunch (most days) despite the frigid (by Louisiana standards) winter. We were $6-an-hour gophers, and we disliked most every second of it.

We stuck out like sore thumbs (there were many due to our lack of tool-handling dexterity). Here we were the gentle, sensitive artist-types working in a very rough & gruff environment. Not all the guys were crude though. One in particular, a fellow Christian, befriended me and soon became a ray of light on that job. Richard was his name. He had quite a strange sense of humor in that he had some sort of pirate fixation. So whenever he’d catch me walking across the warehouse floor going to fetch something, he’d yell out “ARRRRR, young Peters lad!!”. It nearly always made me smile. I’m smiling now.

Richard was a kind man who encouraged me during those long days. He drove me nuts at times but still to this day he remains fixed in my memory as a joyful reminder of knowing who you are and by whom you were made. The art becomes the kneeling man…

he’d always stop and look at me
I swore he could see right through to my heart
I’d heard he was one of those “fanatics”
always praying, always singing

but that’s the way it was with Richard
always smiling, always believing

it takes three to find a manger
and two to share a story
but one to die for mercy
and life is given to me

you could say an empty vessel
is worthless to a man
but in the hands of the sculptor
the art becomes the kneeling man

he knows something that I forgot
and Richard is my reminder

it takes three to find a manger
and two to share a story
but one to die for mercy
and life is given to me