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There’s an ongoing argument around the big round table at the Grounds for Divorce.  It’s not the one involving putting a Chevrolet short block in a Ford, or even changing the original factory color when doing a full restoration.  It’s the argument of hard work versus dumb luck, and which is more prevalent.

Of course, those of us who attribute success more to dumb luck than to the hard work side of the equation are always presented with the argument of Ayden Abernathy, the All Lone Star State tight end from the Class of 2013 Jim Bowie High School football team.  Despite the Jim Bowie Knives having a losing season that year, Abernathy went on to win accolades and eventually a full scholarship to El Paso Baptist College in Van Horn.

“He brings his lunch pail to work every day,” is what a lot of sportswriters said in newspaper columns around the state.  That said something about the work ethic of young Abernathy, as well as that of most of the Texas sportswriters who seemed to struggle with finding anything new to say about a kid from a small town and underperforming high school getting a scholarship.

Nonetheless, Abernathy showed up at the facility every day, doing strength training workouts, and studied his playbook like it was a PLAYBOY.  Despite his moderate size and somewhat stifled athleticism, the kid caught the eye of NFL scouts and the next thing anyone knew, his name could be heard on the TV at the far end of the bar at the Lucky Lady on Sunday afternoons.  He was a rookie sensation starting on a pro team.

He probably would still be in the NFL, possibly playing for a Super Bowl contender, had it not been for an aggressive opponent at the end of a game that didn’t even matter.  A poorly placed cleat caused Abernathy to lose a testicle, suffer a torn hamstring,  and be dropped from the sponsorship deal he’d recently signed with Tadalafil.  Turns out that manufacturers of erectile dysfunction products don’t want to be tied to a spokesman only toting around half a sack.

Abernathy was back in Fort Stockton, working out at the Proving Grounds.  Not a bad gig, but not like being a pro athlete, to be sure.  The cut in pay was worse than the nickname coworkers gave him.  But he eventually got used to the reduced wages and being called ‘UnoNut’.

But the point of that whole story was that UnoNut makes a strong case for those of the ‘Hard Work’ camp.  Those around the table who fall squarely in the ‘Just Luck’ camp will just as quickly point to Paul Poteet to make their argument.

Poteet was a nerdy kid with long hair who played the guitar while stumbling through a completely undistinguished career as a student of Our Lady of Immeasurable Concern.  He played in the band and graduated in the half of the class that made the top half possible.  For several years after he graduated and moved out to California, Sister Thelma couldn’t even remember him ever having been a student at Immeasurable Concern.  “I’m sure he was a delightful young man,” she noted.  “I just have no recollection.”

He played backup guitar on a handful of marginal albums put out by substandard bands.  He wrote songs and waited tables in and around LA, finding about the same level of success in each endeavor.  His mother finally convinced him that nothing good was ever going to happen if he stayed in California.  “You need to come back home and get out of the bowl of granola you’ve been living in.  It’s all fruits and nuts out there.  Come back to Fort Stockton where you belong.  It’s God’s country and you need to reclaim your birthright,” his mother told him on a long distance call one Saturday morning.

By Thursday he was back in town, unpacking his 1974 Ford Maverick Grabber.  He didn’t find any full-time work, but strung together a series of part time jobs at the Tiny Bubbles Car Wash, the Rusty Hammer Hardware Store, and odd jobs around the neighborhood to earn sort of a living.  “At least he got out of the god forsaken den of iniquity he’d been living in,” his mother told friends.  They knew exactly what she meant, several having visited Los Angeles on vacation.

And then, out of the blue with Paul Poteet having absolutely nothing to do with it, fate smiled on the young man and changed the course of his entire existence.  Producers of a new movie called Love Naturally featuring four different love stories all taking place around the holidays were looking for a theme song for the movie.  “We feel like we’ve got a seasonal hit with some staying power here,” the Executive Producer said while viewing the daily rushes towards the end of filming at the studio.  “But we need a clincher.  An ear worm that will crawl into people’s brains in the theater and go home with them and play over and over again.  Make them want to see this flick more than once.  Maybe come back to it year after year.”

That’s when someone who was more or less a third tier hanger-on remembered a little tune that Poteet had written and recorded as a demo for a single that never got cut.  It was called, All I Want for Christmas is Him.  It was written at the bitter ending of a relationship Paul had just come out of with a Guatemalan bus boy.  He was wounded, worried, and whipped, and managed to work all those feelings into the lyrics, while still keeping the melody upbeat and inspirational in a Holiday sort of way.

Inasmuch as one of the love stories featured in the movie revolved around similar circumstances only in the setting of a US Congressman’s office instead of a restaurant and bar, the producer thought it just might work.  The demo was retrieved.  The assembled group listened to it.  The consensus around the table was that it would be perfect.  “I even want the kid who wrote it and made the demo to sing it for the movie version.  The fact that nobody’s ever heard of him makes it all the better.  A nondescript nobody singing about lost love.  Everyone and their holiday dog will relate to it.  That’s the hook we’ve been looking for!”

Long story longer, All I Want for Christmas is Him became the theme song for Love Naturally.  Love Naturally became sort of a cult classic, then a holiday standard, and is played non-stop from before Thanksgiving till after New Years Eve every year on cable TV channels and streaming services all over the world.  Poteet was flown out to Hollywood to record the song six months before the movie came out and got a couple grand for his time and a free weekend back in LA.

After a quick reunion with the Guatemalan bus boy, Poteet was back on a plane heading east for Fort Stockton.  He didn’t think that much about the whole experience.  But then Love Naturally turned into a blockbuster.  The royalties from writing and recording All I Want for Christmas is Him began flowing into Poteet’s bank account like the Rio Grande flows into the Gulf of America.  Trixie from the Klip-N-Dye, who claims to have seen the bank statements, says Poteet gets over a million bucks a year just from that one song.  “Some years it’s closer to two million!” she has claimed after a few beers at the Lucky Lady.

One of the first things he did with that kind of silly money was buy a 1961 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud II James Young Limousine.  “Quite a step up from a 1974 Maverick Grabber,” Lucinda said the first time she saw it.  Of course Rusty, from the hardware store, said something a lot more earthy.

“The 1961 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud II is a long-wheelbase limousine with right-hand drive that is said to be one of 38 vehicles from a four-year production run of coachwork by James Young Limited of Bromley, England. It was refurbished between 2001 and 2003 by the Old Timer Restoration Center of Concord, Massachusetts. Refinished in blue over a refreshed interior with gray leather upholstery and burl wood trim, the car is powered by a 6.2-liter V8 paired with a four-speed automatic transmission, and it has dual SU carburetors, fold-down rear tables, and power windows,” Poteet told his mother.  

She was as unimpressed as she could have been.  Never understanding her son’s love of British luxury cars, she was even more surprised by the arrival of a Guatemalan kid hired to serve as chauffeur.  To be honest, the chauffeur blended in around town more than the Silver Cloud ever did, although both were over the top in their flamboyance.

“It’s harder than you think to spend a million bucks a year,” Lucinda said as we debated hard work versus luck.  Of course, there were the expected comments about wanting an opportunity to give it a shot.

“You see where hard work got Uno Nut Abernathy.” New Guy said.  “I’d sooner be lucky than have to work hard.”

I think that both sides of the argument just might be missing something.  You can work as hard as anybody, but one twisted cleat and it’s all over.  You’re singing falsetto and rotating tires at the Proving Grounds.  Likewise, you can just be at the right place at the right time with a song about unrequited Guatemalan love one day and in the back seat of a 1961 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud II James Young Limousine the next.

Fate is a fickle friend.

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