I Met Him Once

It was five or six years ago when I was in line at a Delta Airlines gate at Dulles International Airport in D.C., very early in the morning. I don't know what everybody else was doing, but I was trying to get a seat assignment changed. So, I'm standing there bleary-eyed (way too early) and my friend Michael Hoskins, standing right next to me, whispers, "Did you see who's sitting over there?"

I have a look: there is an old black man sitting by himself. He's got a sort of Western feel in his dress, accented with the hat. Big eyeglasses, and minding his own business, with a black leather carry-on and ready to go.

"Should I know him?" I asked Mike. "Yes," he nodded, "you should."

I looked again, and damned if it didn't dawn on me.

When I got my airplane seat squared away, I went over and sat down right next to him. "Good morning," I said. "Can I tell you something?" He glanced at me and sort of nodded.

"Your life," I started, and he looked at me sharply on those two words, not knowing what might be coming next.

"...is the sort of a treasure that makes a man happy that, of all the times in history that he could have been born into, he lived in the times that you did. Thank you, sir."

And with that, he was off and running. Before the session was concluded, he had more than a dozen of us standing and sitting around listening to stories from his life and work. People came by for autographs, and he was as sweet as he could be to everyone. Our guitar player, Dr. Derek Scott, ask the man if he would play his (Derek's) guitar, just so he could tell everyone that "the great Bo Diddley played it." He did, and well, too.

Then, our airplane came and we flew away.

I was happy for the opportunity to tell him that.