Twin Tales of Retirement

So I’m reading my paper the other day and I see where Garth Brooks, the country singer who is on every TV program I watch and every magazine cover I see every week of my life, is planning his retirement. Ol’ Garth is only 37, but he’s preparing to call it a career at the end of next year.

Music isn’t the No. 1 priority in his life anymore, Garth says. He has a hankering for spending more time back home with the three little girls who need him . . . and that means his daughters, not the Dixie Chicks.

Bless your heart, Garth.

I personally believe that mandatory retirement in America should be closer to age 37, so that more of us can knock off early.

Fact is, some people work because they need to; others work because they love to. Charles Schulz, the great cartoonist who has been drawing the “Peanuts” comics for nearly 50 years, obviously loves his work, but is retiring at 77 because of poor health. Otherwise, I bet he would never stop drawing that bald boy with the round head.

(A boy who bears a strong resemblance to certain country music superstars and newspaper columnists, I might add.)

More of us need to indulge our heart’s desires when we can. Garth Brooks got himself a tryout with the San Diego Padres baseball team last spring, just to see if he had any other kind of hits in him. He was released by the Padres in training camp, but at least he went down singing.

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Jerry D. Hobbs lives in Lindsay, Calif., a nice, love-your-neighbor kind of place halfway between Bakersfield and Fresno. If you’re like me, you probably have eaten a ripe olive or two produced in Lindsay in your day.

He never worked in the olive cannery there, but for 25 years Jerry was employed over at an industrial dairy in Lemoore. Bright and early every morning, the milk would be brought straight from the farms to the creamery, where it would be processed into cottage cheese, mozzarella or other typical dairy products.

Jerry did his job. He’d be up most days by 4 a.m., and that meant Saturdays and Sundays too, because as Jerry says, the cows don’t stop just because it’s the weekend.

But all the while he was working, Jerry’s mind was occupied by thoughts of his first true love.

Country music.

He’d spent much of his life listening to the sweet sounds of musicians like Ray Price, Merle Haggard, Marty Robbins and Bob Wills, men who made you not only sway to their music but actually dance to it. Not like nowadays, when audiences wouldn’t dream of doing a two-step while some superstar was performing on stage.

“I’m an older person who doesn’t quite fit in with these new, young, sexy country artists,” Jerry acknowledges, “even though I feel I can sing and perform as good as they can.”

Having grown up in a musical house--his father was a country and western bandleader--Jerry always felt that was the life for him. He’d listen to western swing on the Bakersfield radio stations and write his own songs whenever he found the time.

Before long his own four-piece band came together. And there were club dates available, because in Central California a good country band can get to be on a first-name basis with the audiences that come to kick up their heels.

The hard part was playing a gig until midnight or 1 in the morning, then having to be at the creamery by 5.

So when he was 54, Jerry D. Hobbs did exactly what Garth Brooks is considering at 37. He got his priorities in order.

He upped and quit.

“I retired from the Teamsters and got my little retirement check and made music my life,” he says.

Jerry D. Hobbs and the Country Rhythm Makers don’t sell albums the way Brooks does, or Brooks & Dunn do, or the Dixie Chicks do, but they’re out there making the circuit, playing their hearts out.

Hobbs is 58 now and has no regrets.

“We’ve been pretty successful in the clubs up here. Sometimes the same married couples come see us from show to show.

“They all tell us the same story--you can’t hear any good country music on the radio these days to dance to. See, a lot of people still prefer our kind of music to that country-rock sound you hear today. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s not what you’d call danceable, is it?”

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So I’m sitting in my office today, holding the new “Truckload of Country” CD that Jerry D. Hobbs just kindly sent to me, featuring fine tunes by Bronco Buck Cody, Rooster Quantrell, Donna Darlene, Pap & the Side Men, Crockett Frizzell and so many more--plus Jerry’s own recording of “I’m a Texas Boy,” naturally--and it’s got me to thinking.

Garth could be right.

Jerry could be right.

A man has to know when it’s time to move on, to try something new, to smell those roses before it’s too late.

Retirement is sounding good to me. I probably couldn’t play for Jerry’s band, and I definitely couldn’t play for Garth’s. But I have seen the San Diego Padres play, and I could probably play for them.

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Mike Downey’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write to him at Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053. E-mail: mike.downey@latimes.com.