Chukker Weekender lets the good times, friendships and music roll again | MARK HUGHES COBB

Not unlike other reunions, there were curtains of tears, edges of happy confusion — even those who've aged well have still aged, in 20 years — but more often laughter, fervent hugs, and impassioned conversations during the Chukker Weekender.

There were folks you'd thought gone — others you'd only hoped so — and some you needed to squint at, then look down to their name tag, then back up again, to make recognition click into place. Late on Saturday, after, presumably, everyone who needed to know knew, I added a couple of tags to my T, including one reading "My eyes are up here ^," and "Inigo Montoya ...." Artist Jude Weaver inscribed one on me: "Hot off the press." I will happily accept the pun, and blithely, blindly assume a compliment.

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Many folks looked the same, a few more smile indicators and energy storage, a bit more gray within the brown, a bit more white overtaking gray: Yeats' "sorrows of your changing face." A few appeared to be pondering the doorstep, though that's an awkward thing to think as video rolls on of the actual departed.

Near the end of Justin Cronin's "The Twelve," second in the "Passage" trilogy, which some TV manufacturers — couldn't call them creatives — wildly misunderstood, the beating heart of the first two books draws to a languid close. Former FBI agent Brad Wolgast and "the girl from nowhere," Amy Harper Bellafonte, ride bikes on a dusty lane, the tale taking an inexplicably sunny turn, given waves of grim horror that preceded.

And wasn't Wolgast, you know, gone? Apparently not until one more goodbye.

They glide to a rest atop a grassy hill. To Wolgast, Amy fluctuates, seeming to be both girl and woman, and all things in between. There's no wind. Realization dawns.

"I remember thinking I had to be brave," he says.

"You were. The bravest man I ever saw," Amy answers.

You need to read to experience the impact, but Wolgast's love for Amy, the daughter he should have had, transcends ... well, pretty much anything. Their devotion to one another is their salvation, and as the girl from nowhere becomes the girl who saves the world, it literally means everything.

"That was always the hardest part, missing you. I think that's why I could never bring myself to leave. I always thought, 'What will Amy do without me?' Funny how in the end it was the other way around...."

Far down in the valley, figures appear in the gloaming. Amy lets Wolgast go, averring that this is heaven: "It's opening the door of a house in twilight, and everyone you love is there."

Well, it wasn't exactly that, but the two-day Chukker Weekender, last Friday and Saturday at Druid City Brewing Co., evoked some coming-on-eventide, Is this Iowa? emotions. Temperately enough, our fiery everlasting summer stretched through; the sharp bitter stone of autumn didn't fall until weekender was done.

First, everyone we loved couldn't be there. As seen in that too-long video roll, some had gone on to their house in the valley. Others couldn't make the trip, for distance, for other gigs, for monetary or health concerns. Second, it felt like another beginning, not a finale.

Many beloved were present, on their feet or perched on their jeans, and even through aching knees and backs, dancing. My "era" of The Chukker ran from the late '80s up to the close, with a fairly long gap in the early '90s where I was mainly keeping my head down and trying to salvage something, anything, from a broken relationship.

All I dredged up were lessons and songs, several of which the Crying Jags played Friday night, along with an equal number by my musical singing-songwriting partner in the Corvairs and Jags, Robert Huffman. The crowd was nutty-happy, up and hopping even over choices I thought might just be head-nodders.

Dancing to misery. Best therapy yet.

Back then, we kinda specialized in sad songs that sound happy, in part because of the electricity of the band: My dear old college friend Ken Adams setting the tempo, powering the drums, Steve Wallace on bass thunder, and all the way from Portland, Oregon, our other Corvair-Jags pal, Tommy Sorrells, lifting everything on guitar riffs I might have tried, if I'd thought of 'em, and probably will try and steal, unsuccessfully, now.

The sad-happy resonates with work in theater, something I'd barely begun when the Chukker closed, Oct. 31, 2003. One of the most potent lessons: work the opposites.

Some actors brag about being able to cry on command. But not crying, and letting the audience see restraint, that force holding things in check, that's the right stuff. It's when a catch registers in an otherwise modulated voice: a stumble in the path, drops from a clear sky, a glitch in the matrix.

And I've assayed lyrical-musical evolution, where sad turns to defiant, daring to triumphant, liberated to dynamic, so yeah. Let's dance.

You can guess from the title George Herbert chose for collection "Outlandish Proverbs" what he thought of the idea that "Living well is the best revenge." Much as with Polonius — who begins "Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit .... " before launching into rambling discourse — tongue cannot be dislocated from cheek. However, Polonius, at the close of his smothering speech to departing son Laertes, piling cliche upon banality upon triviality, actually stumbles on something poignant: "This above all: To thine own self be true."

And so Herbert's "living well" contains a kernel of truth, even though with the joys of a life well-played comes realization you neither desire nor require revenge.

Even with her heart in the right place, Amy was wrong: Not everyone he loved was there.

But maybe someday, and at some home, while the light persists.

Mark Hughes Cobb is the editor of Tusk. Reach him at mark.cobb@tuscaloosanews.com.

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Chukker Weekender Druid City Brewing Tuscaloosa | MARK HUGHES COBB