30 days of song: day 6

A song that reminds me of some place:
"Rollin By" by Robert Earl Keen, Jr.

It's a busted old town
On the plains of West Texas
The drugstore's closed down
The river's run dry
The semis roll through
Just like stainless steel stallions
Goin' hard goin' fast goin' wild
Rollin' hard rollin' fast rollin' by

Texas is a good place to be from (it's like a whole nother country). I can't claim native Texas status, but I did spend quite a few formative years in Dallas and Houston. I learned what I liked about music, about men, friends, weather, barbecue, texmex, melancholia, solitude, and sky in Texas. Houston, Galveston, Beaumont--these are east Texas places. Wet. Green. Oily hazy ocean salty tar ball sticky. I've only been out in West Texas a few times, and all but one of those was only "west" in comparison to "east."

The drive-in don't play
No Friday night picture
With no big silver screen
To light up the sky
And gone are the days
Of post-wartime lovers
Goin' hard goin' fast goin' wild
Rollin' hard rollin' fast rollin' by

Once, a bus from North Texas U to Flagstaff. Count the Dairy Queens. Note the change from civilization to something different. Something a gray green color, the clouds hanging in the sky from wires, three dimensional, casting shadows. Shreds of towns. Cows. Grasshopper oil rigs squeezing the last bits out. Glad the truckers didn't beat Ruben up.

The mission still stands
At the edge of the plateau
And a stone marks the graves
Where the old cowboys lie
Asleep in a time
In a town just a young man
Goin' hard goin' fast goin' wild
Rollin' hard rollin' fast rollin' by

Stop in high school on the way to a retreat in San Antonio. August in Texas. Trying not to breathe. Patrick's sleeves rolled up, looking like he could fade into the crowd for the first time since I met him. The water in the glasses at the cafe hazy. John doesn't drink his; I drink mine, grinning.

And me I stand here
At the last filling station
While the wind moans a dirge
To a coyote's cry
And I'm back in my car
And I'm out on the highway
Goin' hard goin' fast goin' wild
Rollin' hard rollin' fast rollin' by

Nothing like driving alone through Texas. Except maybe sharing a cab of a truck with someone worth looking at, riding bitch between him and his girlfriend, or sitting sideways watching him tell me anything, anything just to hear the voice and see the expressions, already planned before I got in. Stopping for gas, getting back out onto the Farm to Market road, thinking, what do I say now?

Lyle Lovett's version: