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Purple Martins' Majesty

Wesley Starr is a man in love.
That became clear to me Thursday as I sat by the 94-year-old on a weathered wooden swing in his backyard.

The romance he's carried on more than 67 years has nothing to do with me nor with any woman who walks this earth.
But it's just as real as the sun glinting through clouds on a windy spring day.
Starr lives in Jacksboro in a tidy home with patches of flowers and purple martin houses in the backyard.
He walks with a cane, and his hair is snow white. But he possesses a vitality fueld by his interest in his family, his sprituality and his feathered friends.
I interviewed him Thursday because he's had purple martin houses since the 1940s, and I always think I just might learn something from someone who's made it into the 90s and still has a zest for life.
I was right.
Starr rocked the swing back and forth, bumping it on the wooden cane planted between his feet and calling to the martins, "Come on, boys! Join us!"
A foursome flitted overhead in an ecstasy of flight.
Worried at first they wouldn't come, he told the photographer, Torin Halsey, to go slam the door on a shed a couple of times.
That's his signal to the purple martins.
Starr looked at me, leaned forward and boldly asked, "Are you married?"
He said it the way some people have asked me if I was a Christian or had a "church home."
"No," I said.
"Why not?" he said in a demanding tone.
He told me he'd been married 67 years.
Before his wife Estelline died, they used to sit on the wooden swing, drink coffee and watch the purple martins.
They had two girls together.
"Two girls, that's all you need," he said.
He and Estelline got hitched in 1930 and shared the depression, raising the two girls and then settling into old age.
Starr still drives a 50-mile round trip three times a week to visit her grave.
He doesn't live alone though.
"The good Lord lives with me," Starr said.
I felt sad for him and happy for him at the same time.
His Estelline was gone, but he'd never forget her and planned to see her again someday.
When we left, Starr walked us to his back gate and said to me, "If you ever get tired of that newspaper business, you can come back here. You might have to do some cooking though."
We laughed.
I walked by his pickup parked in the garage. It sported a bumper sticker:
Warning
In case of rapture, this car will be unmanned.

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