Late one night in the early 90s my phone rang. The caller asked, "Hey, is this Dalton Roberts?" I answered, "Yes it is and this sounds like Joe Talbot."

I hadn't seen Joe in several years but his voice was distinctive. He always talked like he had a jawbreaker in his mouth.

He said he had been hunting me for weeks. Said he sent me a check and the letter was returned. He'd called every phone number he had been given for me over two decades since he'd published my songs.

"What kinda check you got for me, Joseph?" I asked.

"A six dollar check for royalties on the Charlie Louvin song we got recorded for you some time ago." Some time ago, for sure. It had been twenty years

"You mean you have hunted me for weeks to give me a six dollar check?" I asked incredulously

"Yeah, man," he answered, "I don't sleep good at night if there's anybody out there I owe anything at all."

Experiencing someone's integrity can do more for us than the finest sermon from the most distinguished pulpit in the world. And at that time, I desperately needed something to give me the heart to make another run on the songwriting business.

Like everyone I've known in the music business, I had met my share of bottom feeders, liars, cut-throats, cheats, connivers and other unbelievably bad jerks. It had about destroyed my motivation to haul any of my ditties to Music City, USA. But here was a man spending more on phone calls and postage than the amount of the check he was chasing me to deliver.

Twice Joe was president of the Country Music Association. He had made a fortune pressing records in the days of LPs and 45s. When CDs music's new format and the New York and LA crowd descended on Nashville to "re-engineer the marketing strategy," Joe's publishing catalog gathered dust on the shelf. But there was not a speck of dust on the window pane of his integrity.

Think back over your life on the people you have known whose integrity was crystal clear to you. Were they not the gibralters you anchored to when the winds of life were slamming your little boat against the jagged reefs? Were they not the people you could show your life wounds without worrying that they would embarrass you by putting your pain on the streets?

In addition to my own father, I have often thanked God that my first "big boss" when I started teaching in Chattanooga was Dr. Bennie Carmichael. He always told it like it was whether you wanted to hear it or not. He had that Marine fearlessness that wouldn't allow him to back down from anything or anybody when he thought he was right. I loved Mayor Rudy Olgiati but how well I recall one time when Bennie was standing up for more money for children and held his ground despite the mayor's harsh scoldings. It wasn't arrogance, it was unflinching integrity.

I'm also grateful that one of my earliest political heroes was Mayor Ralph Kelley. I had supported Olgiati but when I saw Kelley breathing his vision into Chattanooga during a time of stagnation, it changed my whole attitude toward politics and politicians. He could have sat back and grinned his way through his term for he was a likeable man, but he chose to take the heat to get us off dead center. Despite a health problem exacerbated by a high stress job, he stayed long enough to get us moving in the right direction.

There is no reward on this planet equal to the inner peace of doing the right thing. Comparing it to winning is profane. Comparing it to money is blasphemous.

Integrity makes us do hard things. And amusing things. Like spending fifty bucks to hunt up someone we owe six bucks. Written By: Dalton Roberts DownhomeP@aol.com