Time is music, life's a song. Jimmy Dean's at the end of his crescendo. The years have taken him up, up, up: to a place called Chaffin's Bluff - a peaceful spot high above the James River outside Richmond, Va., where the country-western recording artist intends to live out his years.
''This is the own-ly place around here the Yankees didn't take,'' he says in that Texas drawl. ''And you kin rest assuuured, as looong as I'm here, they never will.''
That voice. I've been looking for Jimmy Dean's Christmas album, and what do I find instead? The real thing. He's read some columns I've written and called me on the phone. I think: I have to get him to sing that song.
'Ba bum be bum bum'
As a boy, I loved Mr. Dean's album, A Christmas Card. One song in particular stayed with me in ways I can't explain. To this day, I remember word-for-word the lyrics of ''My Christmas Room.'' I wore that song out when I was growing up. Now I sing it for my children at bedtime.
After writing about my unsuccessful search for the album, I mailed copies of the columns to Jimmy Dean Foods in Cordova, Tenn. Some of you might only know Jimmy Dean as the sausage man. Fame is fleeting. Mostly, Mr. Dean's recording career is over. He doesn't like the studio.
Mr. Dean's executive assistant, Mary Moore, forwarded my columns to her boss. Days later, my phone rang, and there he was. I could hear that song in his voice. That voice. It rolls and lingers like distant summer thunder.
Long ago, Jimmy Dean, now 68, sang to his children. His daughter, Connie, used to sing with him in the car:
Take me along if you love me,
Take me along.
Take me along with you.
''Ba bum be bum bum,'' Mr. Dean sings.
''That's the part she liked best.''
Answers my question
Sometimes, of a cold winter night in a town far away from his own, Jimmy Dean still sings to children. Mine.
I hear his voice plain as day when I launch into ''My Christmas Room'' for my own son and daughter.
It's a song about the things that abide, about keeping the spirit of Christmas around all year long.
''Since I'll have no Christmas room, when Christmas goes away. Then make my heart a Christmas heart that carols every day.
''And let it be my Christmas room, where goodwill toward men shall stay.''
''Sweet song,'' he says. ''That's what it's all about, y'know.''
It's been 30 years since Mr. Dean recorded that one. He hasn't listened to it since. Never listens to his own music. He cringes at the sound of his own great voice. ''Sounds like I'm garglin' with a mouthful of peanut butter,'' he says.
I wonder as we speak if Jimmy Dean ever found his Christmas room, a place where he's at peace with the world. He answers my question even before he hears it.
''Sometimes I sit out on the back porch on spring afternoons with a glass of Merlot and watch the sun dip down behind the James River,'' he says. ''And I know that I ain't mad at noooo-body.''
I tell him how much his music has meant to me and my children. And before I know it, the words I wanted to hear from him are tumbling from his lips.
''If I owned a great big house, I'd have a Christmas room,'' he says.
''When things about me all went wrong, I'd find Christmas still in bloom.''
Then he says he has to go. The man's scheduled for a haircut. It's OK, though. I've found Jimmy Dean, and Christmas, too, alive and well in the spring, ba bum be bum bum.
Rob Kaiser is The Enquirer's Kentucky columnist. He can be reached at 578-5584.