... just keeps gettin' better ......................

      Before Robert and the Professor had finished their first glass,  Lazarus walked through the back door and strapped on his hollow-bodied Silvertone guitar.  He faced the wall and began playing riffs with the volume turned low.  Most of the customers didn't notice he was there.  As he practiced, his band - all young white men - came in carrying speakers and instruments and began to set up.

      "There's my Lazarus," said the Professor.  "Notice how he's in the zone.  In that place where nothing is distracting him?  He's seventy-years-old, and he just keeps gettin' better.  He could be playin' to fifteen people or fifteen hundred, and he'd be workin' just the same because when he picks up his guitar it's spirit for him.  Its the feelin' that he's using a gift, and it comes from the inside."

      "That's the way work is supposed to be, you know," the Professor said, chuckling.  "You play what you're given.  Everybody's got somethin', and instrument, a tool."  Pausing, he leaned forward and whispered, "You use it.  That's what's it's about."

-David Mutti Clark,  Professor Brown Shoes Teaches the Blues