The Journey

Devil Mountain
(Instrumental)

Kenny Ray
“It’s kinda hard to uh . . . find a starting point. But I’ve heard about John A. Murrell since I was five years old . . . big enough to understand what was goin’ on.
“And uh . . . there’s no doubt in my mind that John A. Murrell was one of the biggest crooks and scoundrels and murderers that I’ve ever heard of . . . I think he was worse than Jesse James and the Younger Boys all rolled in together.”

Nashville, Tennessee
1968

Never seen anything like it. Southern Red Oak, Maple, and Ash. Yellowwood and Buckeye. Thirty to forty feet tall they line to form a canopy of forest green above the road.
After dark they transform. Under glow of mercury-vapor, streets become a network of tunnels that wind the hills. West End to Hillsboro Village and Music Row . . . the Hermitage, Natchez Trace, and Belle Meade. Music City is a whole new world.
My personal haunt to come of age.

Least till now, life has pretty much stayed on course. Timewise, that is.
1950 journey kicks off in a world of flatland dust. The High Plains. Hub City, Texas, where streets are squared in a checkerboard under vast open sky. Here and there tree bent from the wind. That’s what I’m used to.
Start out a sawhorse cowboy, then Davy Crocket. World is black and white. Lone Ranger, The Stooges and Twilight Zone on TV.
Me and my buddies chase tumbleweeds in vacant lots.

But you know . . . not as though I’ve never seen a forest.
Early days . . . most of the ‘50s I go back and forth from flat land cottonfields to piney woods northwest Louisiana. Two-lane blacktop all the way. I ride with Mom and Cousin Shuletta. And we go visit Granny, Grandad, and my southern kin.

Country folk.
I’m thinking about them right now. Music City, Nashville is full of down-home, good-natured folks with southern drawl. Same as my aunts, uncles, and cousins round Shreveport. Especially the Norsworthys . . . Paw Paw, Aunt Florence, cousins Tood and Kenny Ray down in Kisatchie.

Uncle Sib comes to mind, too.
He’s the family musician. Got them big ears. Plays fiddle and mandolin. Can even pull a tune out of a handsaw. By mid ‘60s . . . ’65 to be exact I’m playing guitar myself. Rock-and-Roll. Got a natural feel for psychedelic haze. That’s how I come to Music Town.
And to be honest why tonight all this has changed.  Timewise that is.

Nashville, Tennessee
1834

I’m used to what Shuletta calls . . . visitations. Long as I can remember we’ve seen apparitions . . . phantoms that come and go. Though, tonight I’m confused when the asphalt corner of Acklen Avenue and Natchez Trace transforms.
What has been heart of Music Row is now a dusty lane where the shimmer of a young man bout my age is tied to a post. Long hair, fierce look in his eye . . . under torchlight a posse of ghosts . . . shadow men dressed frontier hold him down and take a hot iron to his thumb.

Music City
1972

It’s over in blink of an eye.
The illusion . . . if that’s what it is. Spooky scene fades in a time warp. All out of sorts, feelin’ sick . . . find myself at this moment in the alley behind Red Dog Saloon off Music Row.
Got a bloody nose, holding my broke-neck guitar. Psychedelic world of Rock-and-Roll ain’t workin’ out. Far as that goes, I’m done . . . through with music. Leavin’ home for West Texas tonight.
Funny thing though. Haven’t noticed till now the historic marker by the street where I come of age. Been there all along. Just never paid no mind where now under glow of mercury-vapor it reads,

“John A. Murrell
6 mi. S lived the Notorious Bandit and Outlaw
1804 – 1844”

Clip clop of houseshoes brings a sudden chill. Tap on my shoulder . . . air turns foul. Now I’m choking’ on stench of a cold-eyed shadow . . . rears on hind legs to gallop away through tunnels of forest green.
Dr. Simon told me I should write this down. Said it might help. Just might do me good.

 

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Southland

I’ve been away now for a long time
Southland do you remember me?
Comin’ home is really all I have in mind
I miss your company

Take me Southland I wanta go
Right over yonder
Where that Cane River flows
Not too far from here
Just a ways up the road

Fish are jumpin’
I do declare
A scent of honeysuckle
Lingers in the air

The Cabin

The cabin is rectangular with two rooms off each side where if stood upright the structure resembles a cross.
It’s one-of-a-kind in the piney woods.
To look out a window, canebrakes grow snug against the glass while outside the exterior is clapboard warped and peeling from the tug of vines.  They creep inside and come up through the plank floor.  And where the crossbars meet a deep freeze serves as the only furniture to be found.

Shuletta Foshee . . . my cousin is here.  And she’s brought me to tie up loose ends.  I’ve never met great-uncle Jesse.  Nor am I aware the crackle from a skillet is to mark our first encounter.
At this moment the spirit of Jesse Byrd spry, smiling with a wink, shimmers beside a cast iron stove.  Barefoot, pants legs rolled up, Thomas Jesse Byrd Senior is a visitation fryin’ catfish.
You might think that a sign or premonition.  And I would tend to agree.

Jacksboro Highway

Down Jacksboro Highway
Out One-Ninety-Nine
Stands a little white cross
By the roadside
Jacksboro Highway
Underneath the big sky

It’s a bright shiny day
Not a cloud in sight
Leavin’ Fort Worth
Been this way a thousand times

BAYOU TEXAN
A Memoir of Known Facts
By Robert Alan

PART I
THE JOURNEY

Hub City to Shreveport

Mom told me to hold it in or pee in a can.  She’s just not gonna stop the car.
Mostly, I fidget and jabber calling, “Red Horse!”  Where first one to count ten red cars gets a lemon drop.
Shuletta gives me a swat if I cheat. But like always, she lets me win.

Rick
“I don’t know how many times a year.  Usually, probably about a couple at least every year . . . we would go to Shreveport.
“Of course, we’d go through Dallas it was the old . . . the old Jacksboro Highway and then you go through . . . had to go through Dallas . . . I think it was actually a toll road . . . turnpike through there you had to pay . . . but there was an old road, too.
“But we went over there pretty often.”

Now the Green Frog Café
Ain’t in the same place
Not where I recall
A time we come through late

Rollin’ off a mesa
Drop into the draw
Musta been someplace else
It’s been awhile

It’s an extra-long haul for a kid.
Hub City to Shreveport, Louisiana.  Jacksboro, Ft. Worth and Dallas go smooth.  After that, it’s a drag.  Towns in East Texas are so few and so small it’s hard to even remember their names.
Mom . . . Shuletta’s Aunt Audrey . . . she can’t wait to get back home.  Granny and Grandad . . . all my aunts, uncles and cousins will be there.  For me it’s a chance to get spoiled rotten.  For Mom, it’s her way to keep me grounded with family and something other than solitude, dust, and wind.

Ethyl
“Uh . . . do you remember the first . . . uh dust storm you ever waked up to?
“Well, I do.  I was sleepin’ upstairs . . . and uh . . . I woke up next morning and my bed was just the . . . funniest lookin’ thing.  And down on the floor oh . . . it went . . .
“I had a window right on the northwest, and it just filled up and I never heard . . . I didn’t know what it was that happened.
“So, I got downstairs and got the paper . . .”

High Plains Voodoo

It’s that High Plains voodoo
Casts a spell on you
Where wind calms to whisper
Then leaves with a whiff of déjà vu

Just outside the town of Quitaque
Buffalo ghosts haunt dry river sand
Where they roam in all directions
Through tourist’s courts
Cross Llano land

It’s that High Plains Voodoo
High Plains Voodoo

Rick
“Probably about three or four weeks and every Friday there’d be a storm?
“And there was tornados . . . in the area.  And . . . and you know . . . and it was kind of scary you know cause, it really was . . . all this purple and black looking stuff everywhere . . .”
“I remember just watching them here out south it was just . . . you know you could see it was a big snake.  You know, it was really cool, you know . . .
“See, there’s one over there!  See how far away that is . . . you know . . .
“That’s miles away.  There ain’t nothin’ out there but cotton fields.  See, look at the way it’s going . . .”

The Adobe Clinic

‘Bout halfway Shuletta cracks the window for air and takes the wheel.   Me, I’m counting phone poles.  They remind of where I come from on the High Plains.
Back there on a clear day the sky is a gigantic blue dome above an adobe house.  My folks . . . Dr. Charlie the Yankee and Audrey Ellen from the Sugar State . . . they built it to be a clinic . . . an overnight hospital.
Walls outside are stucco with vigas . . . pine timbers that stick out and follow the roofline.  Inside, there’s a waiting room with an earth oven fireplace, Indian pottery . . . wrought iron fixtures with dark blue, white, and red corn hanging from the timbers.

Audrey Ellen
“The Vigas that they . . . in the ceiling.  In the . . . they stuck out about that much on the outside.  Built just like Santa Fe.  You’ve been to Santa Fe.
“And uh . . . it took a while to do it.  But I laid the floor . . . the floor in the big lobby.  I laid the random oak floor and . . .
“Do you believe that?”
“Uh huh.”

Sometimes . . . like now I watch the Adobe shrink in the west while a ‘Dust Devil tries to keep up.  Mom . . . Audrey Ellen the Registered Nurse wearing starch white with her folded cap.  She’s busy with patients . . . tucks me in an exam room for the afternoon.
I sneak out down the hall.  And sometimes an old Indian with a weathered face is waiting in the lobby.

Joe Toya

If I could talk to Joe Toya
Standin’ here today
I think we could work it out
Set the record straight

Take a walk in the cornfield
Sift a grain of truth
If I could talk to Joe Toya
He’d know what to do

Rick
“His name was Joe Toya.  He was an old . . . he was a pretty old guy.  God he was a lot older than you know . . . than Dad.
“And I remember we went over once they had a corn dance.  I don’t know what you call their adobe house . . . this house you know . . . a dirt floor.
“Joe Toya was the man’s name.  He was his friend.”

Feast of Our Lady of the Angels
Jemez Dancers at Pecos

Audrey Ellen
“We went up to the uh . . . some kind of festival . . . Indian festival . . . the Indian . . . the corn dance.
“And uh . . . we started goin’ every weekend to get ideas.  And he met Joe up there uh . . . somewhere close to Santa Fe. Then uh . . . he’d go up and visit with Joe and take ‘im . . . Joe would take him fishing.  And uh . . . they got to be good friends.”

Joe Toya

Other side of Big D Mom’s got her second wind.
Talkin’ how she and Dad met at Parkland Hospital in ’38.  They fell in love, got married . . . moved out west where they met the old Indian.  Wise and weatherworn Joe Toya showed ‘em how to make bricks from mud. They brought the timber from Santa Fe . . . built the clinic in a West Texas cotton field.

Audrey Ellen
“Carmen came out and we’d take this long tool . . . I don’t know what you call it . . . had a handle on each end and . . . and uh it was a knife.
“And I peeled logs.
“Carmen and I sat out there and peeled logs till we’d get so tired we’d just come home and . . . and uh we’d uh . . . peel logs till we just give out.
“And he was uh . . . somebody who felt you should work till you dropped.
“And we dropped.”

Joe Toya

Start off with a roll call
Of things left undone
Oaths and broken promises
Races never run

High above El Valle
Cloud cross in the sky
Square account with destiny
Embrace the magic eye

Another phone pole goes by.
I’m sneakin’ where Dad’s X-Ray machine prowls a dark corner.  It casts the shadow of a prehistoric insect.  Just before it knows I’m there I slip off to the lobby.  Folks all over West Texas . . . farmers, ranchers . . . roughnecks from the oil patch . . . they’re here for Dr. Charlie to cure their ills.

Charlotte
“I just remember that my impressions of the office.  I mean . . . everything was so big you know . . . everything.  And then . . .”

Audrey Ellen
“So, we’d have . . . we had a big Waiting Room.  That’s where I laid the floor.  And uh . . . uh they’d all come at once and visit.  The whole . . . I . . . I wouldn’t have enough seats for people to sit.
“They’d be sitting out on the front porch and all in the . . . all the seats in the Waiting Room.  And he . . . if he enjoyed somebody’s hmm . . . talking well he’d keep ‘em and hour.  They’d sit there and talk.  And it’d make me mad.
“So, I’d go knock and I . . . I’d say . . . uh . . . ‘Time’s up.’”

Me, I’m like Dad.  Love to visit.
I’m making the rounds . . . talkin’ and talkin’ . . . talkin’ . . . buggin’ the old timers.  Now here comes Mom.  Diggin’ her fingernails into my wrist.  Scoots me along while the leather face of Joe Toya cracks a dry smile.

Joe Toya

If I could talk to Joe Toya
Standin’ here today
I think we could work it out
Set the record straight

And when floods
Crash the arroyos
Lay it all to waste
Could well talk to Joe Toya
And find another way

 

That Whistle in the Night
Robert Swanson

“Oh, diesel queen of the glittering rail,
Pride of the streamline train,
Your throbbing pistons rule the grade
Where once was Steam’s Domain.

The iron horse has spent his day,
Now fades his thundering might;
But diesel, diesel save for me
That whistle in the night

 

The Super Chief

Yonder comes the Super Chief
Warbonnet silver, yellow red
‘Long mountainside
Windin’ prairie canyon land
Full steam ahead

Westbound Pacific
Hair parted by the wind
‘Hoe-boys’ hang the breeze
Breathless in suspense
At razor edge
Where rainbow’s bend

Catchin’ on the fly
Caprock spirits risin’ high
All board The Super Chief
California do or die

Railroad Crossing

Looks like we’ll be here awhile.
Flashing red lights keep time with the warning bells.  I’m up and at ‘em watching the line of freight cars rumble clickety clack.
It’s a special treat.  Endless stream of tank cars, gondolas and hoppers roll by.  I know ‘em all.  Every crossing we play a game where Shuletta and I call out their names.
Railroads always get me goin.’  Two blocks from Granny’s there’s a trunk line.  And when we get to Shreveport I’ll curl up on the front porch, listen to ‘em talk while fireflies’ blink and the whistle blows.

Jan, Dick and Brenda
“I decided that two most lonesome sounds in the whole world was an old steam engine going through the old pine woods off in the distance and everything. And that sound comin’ through the woods and everything . . . that was the most lonesome sound.
“Or an old cowbell way off you know . . . like it was . . . you know how a kid’s imagination and everything.  I imagine that cow trying to find his way home.”
“Lookin’ for a lost calf.”
“That panther out trying to eat ‘im and all that stuff.”
“Aw . . .”

That Whistle in the Night
Robert Swanson

Silence forever – if you must –
The roar of steam and fire.
Let soulless men be satisfied
With the growl of a diesel flier.

The clanking rod and roaring stack
Forever fades from sight;
But diesel, diesel save for me
That whistle in the night.

Out of the Blue

They come and go in a blur.
Long hair parted by the wind.  Three kids, teenagers runnin’ alongside an empty boxcar.  They grab hold . . . jump through an open door.   And for a split second in the backdrop the Adobe Clinic comes into view.

It’s a sandy day.  Tucked in for the afternoon like always I’m dreaming of having my very own electric train. Silver warbonnet yellow, red the Santa Fe Super Chief is heading west where I am safe, and everything is brand new
“Caboose!”  Shuletta hollers.
Crossbar lifts, bells ringin’ loud that last car fades with those three boys . . . one with a guitar . . . they shimmer and toss a careless wave.

The Super Chief

Cisco and Woody
Slingerland Guitars
Swap tunes cross the boxcar floor
Cold nights
Set the planks on fire

Desert moonlight
Arizona sand
Pass by while night crawls
Time on our hands

That Whistle in the Night
Robert Swanson

Oh, let me hear that plaintive wail
Across the lonely plains,
Or feel the snow-clad peaks fling back
The voice of thundering trains.
Then in my soul there stirs a peace
That tells me all is right

So, diesel, diesel save for me
That whistle in the night.

The Super Chief

Yonder comes the Super Chief
Warbonnet silver, yellow red
Long blindside
Windin’ the extreme
Hangin’ by a thread

 

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INTERLUDE

Jacksboro Highway
Lanny Fiel

Down Jacksboro Highway
Out One-Ninety-Nine
Stands a little white cross
By the roadside
Jacksboro Highway
Underneath the big sky

It’s a bright shiny day
Not a cloud in sight
Leavin’ Fort Worth
Been this way a thousand times
Through the canyons
To the Caprock shelf
Turn off the radio
Thinkin’ to myself

Couldn’t a been more than three years old
Ridin’ took so long
Stood up on the backseat
Great Plains Life
Twistin’ in a dust storm
Little paper flowers
Faded from the rain
Brighten a gravel pit
Cross the passin’ lane

Now the Green Frog Café
Ain’t in the same place
Not where I recall
A time we come through late
Rollin’ off a mesa
Drop into the draw
Must have been some place else
It’s been awhile

I remember Aunt Ora Belle
Takin’ that trip
Dropped peanuts in our cokes
Then took a sip
We called out, “Red Horse!
First one to ten.”
Now I’m countin’ crosses
Thinkin’ ‘bout where I been

Down Jacksboro Highway
Out One-Ninety-Nine
Stands a little white cross
By the roadside
Jacksboro Highway
Underneath the big sky