A Consequential Life

By Bob Melton

“Live a consequential life,” he said.

He shook my hand, stood, and walked toward the Greyhound bus that had just pulled into the station, its brakes hissing as it came to a stop.

Before boarding, he paused and looked back at me with a strange, almost painful smile. I did not understand what he had meant, or what he saw in me that brought that expression to his face. He glanced back once more, waved, and disappeared onto the bus.

I never learned his name. I am not even sure we exchanged names.

We had spent several minutes talking about life while I waited for the ticket line to shorten. He spoke about why we exist, the obligation to help others, the importance of human dignity, and what I believe he called “the greatest good.”

At the time, I was too tired and defeated to fully understand him. I mostly wanted to curl up somewhere and sleep.

I was 16 years old, sitting on a bench in the Greyhound station in Abilene, Texas. I was broke, with only a few dollars and some loose change in my pocket. The man was tall and angular. His clothes were clean but unpressed, and his kind face appeared to have traveled many miles.

He spoke of courage, temperance, prudence and justice. He was probably in his forties, although everyone looked old to me then.

I had not given much thought to the meaning of life. For some time, I had simply been stumbling from one place to another.

But his words stayed with me.

So did his smile.

The Road to Odessa

A few minutes after the man boarded his bus, I approached the ticket counter.

“The fare to Odessa is six dollars,” the attendant told me.

I placed $4.42 on the counter.

“How far will this get me?”

“It will take you to Midland,” he said as he printed the ticket.

He looked at me with an expression much like the one I had seen on the Greyhound man’s face. Then he pushed the 42 cents back toward me.

“Use the restroom before you leave,” he said. “When you reach Midland, stay on the bus. If they don’t make you get off, the next stop is Odessa.”

I had arrived in Abilene early that morning after driving a car overnight from Houston for an automobile dealer. I had been told I would receive $20 when I delivered it.

The dealer in Abilene said I should have been paid in Houston.

I stammered through an explanation. I had no money and needed to reach Odessa, where my father lived.

“Sorry, kid. Not my problem.”

He handed me five dollars and motioned for me to leave.

When I asked for directions to the bus station, he pointed toward the highway.

“Turn right. It’s less than a mile. You can’t miss it.”

I carried a small bag containing a couple of shirts and a pair of jeans. On the way to the station, I stopped at a Dairy Queen and bought a hamburger, fries and a Coke for about 60 cents. Things were inexpensive then, and Texas did not yet have a sales tax.

There was another complication: I did not have a driver’s license.

No one had asked.

A few months earlier, following an argument with my mother and a fight with my stepfather, I had simply left home. I spent several weeks on the streets, often sleeping in the back seat of a car belonging to a friend’s parents.

I survived largely through my own wits and the generosity of friends. Because they were in school during the day, I spent much of my time walking the streets.

I discovered other young people living the same way. Their faces have never completely left me. I have often wondered where life took them. I know that at least two went to jail, and one eventually went to prison.

I stayed with my sister briefly, but a comment from her husband made it clear that the arrangement should be temporary. I honored that message by finding a way to Odessa.

When I finally stepped off the bus, I began walking the dirt streets toward my father’s house. I looked down at my dust-covered shoes and wondered how I would be received when I reached his door.

I had never felt so alone.

It is hard to be 16 years old with no place to go.

And as I walked, I wondered what a consequential life might look like.

I spent the rest of that year working at a job my father found for me. I pushed enormous reels of wire across the West Texas desert and dug seven-foot holes through caliche for telephone poles.

Eventually, I bought a car and returned to Houston.

From that time forward, with only brief exceptions, I would provide my own food and keep a roof over my own head.

The lonely period of homelessness had been short, but its effect on my life was profound. Looking back, I believe the Greyhound man’s expression may have been telling me something simple:

Stop. Change direction. You are traveling down the wrong road.

Dead-End Signs

We are collections of our experiences. When I think about the young man walking those dusty streets and what he might easily have become, I am reminded of a poem I wrote years later about a man most of us have encountered.

Dead-End Signs

He’s always been a rounder,
Mostly a down-and-outer,
Always seeming to be looking
To start his life again.

Most mornings when he gets up,
There’s another mountain to climb,
And every road he travels
Seems to have a dead-end sign.

Of all the roads he’s traveled,
None were straight and narrow,
But they had one thing in common:
They all went nowhere.

At every curve he came to,
He tried to make up time,
But he never stopped to look
For the dead-end sign.

He was once his mother’s favorite.
He showed so much promise,
But lost all he had to offer
Oh, so long ago.

And though she loves him dearly,
He never goes to see her
Unless he’s down and out
With no place else to go.

Someone needs to tell him
That he’s running out of time.
Soon the road that leads back home
Will bear a dead-end sign.

Once he had a family,
Two children and a wife.
He watched them wash away
Through a bottle of his wine.

Someone needs to ask him
To please explain just why
He never raised his eyes
To see the dead-end sign.

I see him near the barroom,
A smile upon his face.
I can tell by how he looks
He wants back in the race.

At the first curve that he reaches,
He’ll try to make up time,
But never find the brakes
Or see the dead-end sign.

Dignity

I have always admired people who carry themselves with dignity and class.

Dignity is difficult to define. Like art, I believe I recognize it when I see it. Some people retain it regardless of age, poverty, loss or circumstance.

I have seen homeless men and women whose clothing was worn and whose surroundings were bleak, yet their bearing seemed to say:

In spite of these clothes, in spite of these surroundings and in spite of my present condition, I possess a dignity that no one can take from me.

I have always aspired to have that quality. Because of my upbringing and sometimes reactionary nature, I have often wondered whether it was available to me. Nevertheless, I continued to pursue it. Over time, I learned to become more measured.

Perhaps dignity begins with how honestly we examine ourselves.

I believe I am honest and possess integrity in most things. I try to be accurate in what I say and responsible in what I do. I hope dignity and class can arise from within rather than being privileges granted only through upbringing.

I was raised Southern Baptist. The red-letter teachings of the New Testament stayed with me, even when the organized religion did not. My spiritual search has continued.

I do not believe a person’s birthplace or parents should determine the limits of his or her life. Too often, however, they do.

My parents were children of the Great Depression. Their families were tenant farmers who worked land belonging to others. During those difficult years, every member of a family was expected to contribute to the basic necessities of life.

My father had a fifth-grade education. My mother completed high school. They were intelligent people who struggled during their early years together, moving from job to job while raising three children.

Eventually, both built successful middle-class lives. They had merit, but their potential developed slowly because opportunities were scarce.

I have often wondered how much more they might have accomplished if opportunity had arrived earlier.

Their instability affected the entire family, and matters became worse after they separated. My brother, sister and I suffered, but I can only imagine the pressure my mother experienced while trying to raise three children with few marketable skills.

I attended 11 elementary schools, three junior high schools and one high school, which I left at the school’s request.

There was no preschool and little stability.

Later, after realizing that I had a family to support, I earned a GED and attended community college. I acquired enough knowledge and confidence to start a business.

Merit can be difficult to recognize, especially when it is buried beneath poverty, instability, poor education or a lack of opportunity. Some people spend much of their lives trying to uncover their own.

Small Victories

In my mid-thirties, after reaching the middle class, I experienced something of an awakening.

I began examining my life and recognized how ignorant I had been about many subjects. Circumstances eventually brought me back to school in my forties, allowing me to recover some of the educational opportunities I had missed.

After a long and circuitous journey, I finally earned the pieces of paper I could hang on the wall.

The past is the past, but I still wonder what my life might have looked like if I had attended one elementary school, one junior high school and one high school before going directly to college.

My progress came through small victories.

After I completed a community project, a man smiled and said, “That makes a lot of sense. Have you ever thought about running for office?”

It was a different kind of smile. It did not suggest that I was on the wrong track. It seemed to say that I was moving forward and should build upon the victory.

I had seen that look before.

Classmates once selected me to represent them before the junior-college faculty. Later, although I was only an apprentice, coworkers chose me as a shop steward and asked me to face management on their behalf.

Those acknowledgments were modest, but they helped me believe in myself. That belief allowed me to become active in my community, build a successful business and interact comfortably with people from economic and educational backgrounds very different from my own.

Eventually, community leaders asked whether I would consider running for the school board.

By then, I recognized that what I wanted most was a voice and the chance to be heard.

Being heard was a small victory in scale but an enormous victory in substance.

I ran for office and won.

Later, while serving as president of the Lions Club, I invited our state legislator to speak. He was a former judge with a heavy Southern accent and an almost perfect Colonel Sanders appearance.

As I listened to him bluster through familiar sayings such as “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” I remember thinking, What a pompous ass.

At the next election, I took his job.

Achievement or Consequence?

My father once gave me a simple instruction:

“I don’t care what you do. Just make a hand.”

It was an expression from his days as a cowboy. To him, it meant that whatever work I chose, I should become competent at it.

I have tried to do that, with varying degrees of success.

But competence and achievement are not necessarily the same as consequence.

An achievement benefits the person who accomplishes it. A consequential act leaves another person, a community or even an animal better off than before.

I now consider myself a writer. I even have a business card that says so.

Although I spend more time resting these days, I continue putting my experiences on paper and using the voice I fought to develop. I intend to keep reminding people that many of the conditions they complain about are conditions they could help change.

I plan to keep writing, speaking and occasionally engaging in a little creative nonsense until someone pries the pen from my hand.

I like myself best when I stand up for people who do not have the power or opportunity to stand up for themselves.

A Man in the Streets

Years ago, I encountered a homeless man on the streets of Austin.

I had passed him several days in a row without looking at him or acknowledging his presence. When I finally stopped and listened, memories returned of the Greyhound man, the dirt streets of Odessa and my own dusty shoes.

That encounter became another poem.

My Conversation with a Man in the Streets

I was walking down the street
In a brand-new suit
When I came upon a man
Who lived in the streets.

I started to walk by,
But then I heard him sigh.
When I turned,
He said these things to me:

“Did you ever wonder
How it feels to be a beggar,
To hunger in a country
With so much?

“Have you ever pondered
How it feels to lose your honor
When you reach out your hand
And beg for charity?

“Let me see if I can tell you.
I’ll try to be brief.
I know you have little time
For a man in the streets.

“I’ll show you no anger.
It left me long ago.
I know you think
This is a life I chose.

“But once I had a job
And a life a lot like yours.
Lord, I had a family
That I loved so dear.

“I lost more than my job
When they shipped me to an island.
I lost all sense of hope
And the will to carry on.

“So I walk these streets.
I sleep in doorways
And reach out my hand
To you for charity.

“When you see me curled up
And holding onto booze,
Be careful with your judgment
Until you’ve walked in these shoes.

“But perhaps you can tell me,
Each time you pass me by,
Why you never stop
To look into my eyes.

“Is it my pain
You do not want to see,
Or is it the hand
Reaching out for charity?

“I’ll show you no anger.
I have none left to give.
It vanished with my sense of worth
And with my will to live.

“But perhaps God will remind you,
The next time you pass me by:
Except for His grace,
There go I.”

A year or so after that encounter, I wrote down what the man had said, perhaps hoping that putting it into rhyme would make it go away.

It did not.

His words were painful, enlightening and profound. Despite his circumstances, his dignity remained intact. I looked into his eyes, listened and shook his hand.

I remain grateful for the experience.

Not long afterward, I realized that much of my public work had already focused on people like him.

Public Service

My first significant legislative accomplishment was a bill connecting Texas Department of Public Safety computers with the National Missing Children Hotline.

Nine missing children were located during the first week.

I later passed legislation addressing runaway and “throwaway” children after learning that approximately 220,000 Texas children either ran away or were pushed out of their homes each year.

On average, many committed their first felony within weeks of reaching the streets. Once a young person acquires a prison record, the possibility of building a stable and successful career becomes far more remote.

I filed several bills intended to keep young people from entering the prison system. Legislative leadership appointed me chairman of the Select Committee on Teenage Suicide, where I helped pass five bills addressing that issue.

The final bill I drafted provided incentives for donating food nearing its expiration date to homeless shelters.

Not all of my legislative work was equally uplifting, but 37 of the 66 bills I filed became law.

After leaving government service, I became chairman of a United States Olympic Committee effort that raised funds to send Austin-area athletes to the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta.

That work led to my appointment as executive director of the Dallas All Sports Association. My responsibility was to raise scholarship money for young athletes.

Over time, our mission expanded. Almost without realizing it, we began awarding scholarships to low-income students who were not athletes.

One day, a board member asked whether he could introduce me to the director of Happy Hill Farm.

“To what end?” I asked.

“They have wonderful kids who are orphaned or homeless,” he said. “Many need help paying for college.”

That introduction opened my eyes to a new group of deserving young people. I visited Happy Hill Farm, Buckner Children’s Home and other facilities serving children without stable homes.

Every application I read, every letter I received and every pair of eyes I looked into seemed to be asking for the same thing:

A chance.

A chance to develop merit.
A chance to claim dignity.
A chance to find a productive place in society.

The Search for Meaning

When I think about consequence, I often return to Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning.

To me, the book is partly about the human search for dignity. Without dignity, a person’s chances of building a meaningful and successful life become scarce.

In 2007, I looked back on the years since my conversation with the Greyhound man and decided to retire.

I was tired.

I believed I had compiled a respectable record of achievement and had lived what could reasonably be called a consequential life.

I moved to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, an art community popular with American expatriates. I thought I could finally slow down.

On my first day there, however, I saw that poverty was everywhere.

I quickly understood that living a consequential life has no retirement date. A new setting simply presents new opportunities to be of consequence.

Within a few weeks, I began volunteering with Casita Linda, helping build homes for Mexican families without adequate housing.

I also started feeding street dogs. I kept a 50-pound bag of dog food in my Jeep, which earned me the nickname “Dog Man” among some of the expatriates.

During my three years in Mexico, I removed 44 dogs from the streets, arranged for their vaccinations and sterilization, and found homes for them.

Not everyone appreciated my opinions or activities. Some people gave me another nickname that is best left untranslated.

Speaking Up

Soon after arriving in Mexico, I joined a breakfast group composed mostly of expatriates discussing events in the United States.

One morning, a wealthy American real estate agent presented himself as an expert on the Civil War.

“Gentlemen,” he announced, “the Civil War was not, and never was, about race. It was about economics.”

He then argued that slavery was primarily a labor and economic issue rather than a racial one.

I had heard that argument before. It is often used to separate slavery from racism, as though the two could ever be meaningfully divided.

I responded that enslaved people were not used solely as agricultural labor. They built homes and businesses, raised children, cooked, cleaned and performed skilled work of many kinds. Their forced labor created wealth across society.

The economics of slavery depended upon race. The institution could not be separated from the racial ideology used to justify and preserve it.

Cheap labor has always been a major force in the American economy, but slavery was more than an economic system.

It was a racial system.

Unfortunately, many of its consequences remain with us.

That exchange earned me yet another colorful nickname among a few members of the breakfast club. It did not trouble me much.

A consequential life sometimes requires speaking when silence would be more comfortable.

Rescue Work

After leaving Mexico, I retired again, this time to Osprey, Florida.

Shelecia and I began doing wildlife rescue together. It had long been her life’s work, and I found each rescue deeply fulfilling.

There will never be a shortage of injured or endangered animals needing help.

Life has slowed considerably, but I still try to acknowledge homeless people I encounter on street corners. I offer a few dollars when I can, shake their hands and look directly into their eyes.

No one should be made invisible.

To me, a consequential life means leaving another person, another living creature or some part of the world better than you found it.

The search for consequence does not end.

Roads

My memoir opens with a poem called “Roads.”

It seems appropriate that it should also bring this story to a close.

Roads

I’ve traveled many roads
Across life’s vast lands.
Now I look back in wonder
And remember where I’ve been.

Some roads were short.
Some roads were long.
On some I turned right,
On others, oh, so wrong.

Some were winding.
Some were straight.
One I traveled too early,
Others far too late.

Oh, the things I’ve seen,
And, oh, the things I’ve done.
Of some I am proud.
From others I run.

But I smelled the roses,
And I drank the wine.
I traveled every road
One road at a time.

I often traveled alone,
Not knowing my destination.
Why was the road less traveled
The one I always chose?

Looking back, how many times
Did I suddenly find
I was on the wrong road,
Unsure where I was bound?

What new direction
Would I have to go
To make the correction
And find the proper road?

Oh, the things I’ve seen,
And, oh, the things I’ve done.
Of some I am proud.
From others I run.

But I smelled the roses,
And I drank the wine.
I traveled every road
One road at a time.

Now, as I look back
At life’s winding course,
I gaze with some pride
And just a little remorse.

At the people I’ve touched
And the wonders I’ve seen,
If we only pass this way once,
What a road it has been.

Oh, the things I’ve seen,
And, oh, the things I’ve done.
Of some I am proud.
From others I run.

But I smelled the roses,
And I drank the wine.
I traveled every road
One road at a time.

Where my journey may end,
I cannot yet know.
Until then, I will keep traveling,
For who knows

What dreams may wait
At the end of the road?

Is there a dream waiting there,
Or only a dead-end sign?

This has been a brief account of my adulthood and my lifelong search for meaning.

I am still walking the road toward a consequential life.