Rip Snorter's Blog

 

 Pancho And Lefty

Living on the road my friend
Was gonna keep you free and clean
Now you wear your skin like iron
Your breath's as hard as kerosene
You weren't your mama's only boy
But her favorite one it seems
She began to cry when you said goodbye
And sank into your dreams

Pancho was a bandit boys
His horse was fast as polished steel
Wore his gun outside his pants
For all the honest world to feel
Pancho met his match you know
On the deserts down in Mexico
Nobody heard his dying words
That's the way it goes

All the federales say
They could have had him any day
They only let him hang around
Out of kindness I suppose

Lefty he can't sing the blues
All night long like he used to
The dust that Pancho bit down south
Ended up in Lefty's mouth
The day they laid poor Pancho low
Lefty split for Ohio
Where he got the bread to go
There ain't nobody knows

All the federales say
They could have had him any day
They only let him slip away
Out of kindness I suppose

The poets tell how Pancho fell
Lefty's livin' in a cheap hotel
The desert's quiet and Cleveland's cold
So the story ends we're told
Pancho needs your prayers it's true,
But save a few for Lefty too
He just did what he had to do
Now he's growing old

A few gray federales say
They could have had him any day
They only let him go so wrong
Out of kindness I suppose

By Townes Van Zandt

Townes wrote this one and sang it for decades before it was picked up by Willie Nelson and other greats.  But when Townes sang it from the time he was 20 until he died it always hushed the crowd.

Jack

 

 

 

I don’t know when we began giving power to strangers. I think it’s a relatively recent phenomenon. Maybe we watched too many Westerns during our formative years, learned from those steely eyed men in saloons that what strangers think about us is worth a gunfight.

Nowadays the extreme version happens in city traffic. Someone shoots someone else a bird. Next step is an exchange of gunfire.

Here’s how the scenario runs:

Some complete stranger pronounces a bias we don't share.

Our thought response:

“This offends me.”

That thought process is driven by a deeper one:

“I want to be offended. I give this stranger the power to offend me. I assign enough value to what this stranger says, or believes, to allow it to trigger a negative emotional path within me. What this stranger says or believes matters.”

We know better.

Strangers cut too wide a swath in their traits to have any real value. They span the breadth of potential human biases. But even knowing this we give them the power to ruin a moment.

I say this is a recent phenomenon because humans of the past behaved differently. Our forefathers didn’t care what Brits thought about us because they recognized that Brits live within an entirely different set of interests.

Even today a Zuni doesn’t care what a Navajo thinks about anything because from the perspective of a Zuni, Navajos don’t have anything valid to contribute to any meaningful discussion. Navajos live in a different reality from Zunis.

Both Navajos and Zunis choose to allow themselves to be offended by the opinions of Anglos and Hispanics, but there’s a reason. They’ve found taking offense is a means of gaining power over those groups.

But neither a Zuni, nor a Navajo would bother being offended by the thoughts and words of the other because to each there’s nothing the other might think that carries the weight of validity.

Not long ago the same was true of people almost everywhere. The people in the town where I was reared cared about the opinions of people within that town, but they couldn’t have cared less what the people in Clovis, twenty miles away thought. It was generally understood that Clovis people were stupid and might think and say anything.

Today we care what everyone thinks about almost everything. We pretend to believe what they think carries value, but we know better. We just like the feel of being offended..

Make my day, Stranger! I'm handing you the power to offend me.

This leaves me cold.

Human opinion hasn’t held up well under scrutiny. It’s worth about what it costs. Mine aren’t that reliable and I haven’t found those of others to be any better.

Jack

 

Ice Skim Reflections

Steel gray afternoon,

Scalpel wind,

Metallic water.

Mind-toes test footing

On a slippery stony surface

Of ten thousand thousand

Things undone

Done wrong

Shouldn’t have been done at all.

Drowned,

Gods, guns, girls, griefs, ghosts

Long lost in the warp and woof;

Liquid carpet of years

Shimmer and beckon.

Steel gray afternoon,

Scalpel wind,

Metallic water.

 

 

From Poems of the New Old West

Copyright© 2002, Jack Purcell

 

 

Messing around with the MM stuff for kicks today the following numbers kept popping up:

WB    7 19 22 31 32 43 45 46 47 48 49 50 52 53 54 55 

RB 22, 31, 43
 
Those high numbers all showed up strong for the WB but I didn't trust them. 

Would have picked 47, 48, 49, 53, 54 and 55  with 22 as redball with 31 as a close contender if I was an MM player. 

Thank goodness I'm not.
 
Jack

 

Talking Mr. Mud and Mr. Gold Blues lyrics

by Townes Van Zandt

 

The wicked king of clubs awoke
it was to his queen turned
his lips were laughing as they spoke
his eyes like bullets burned
the sun's upon a gambling day
his queen smiled low and blissfully
let's make some wretched fool to play
plain it was she did agree
He send his deuce down into diamond
his four to heart, and his trey to spade
three kings with their legions come
preparations soon where made
they voted club the days commander
gave him an army face and number
all but the outlaw jack of diamonds
and the aces in the sky
He give his sevens first instructions
spirit me a game of stud
stakes unscarred by limitation
'tween a man named Gold and man named Mud
Club filled Gold with greedy vapors
'til his long, green eyes did glow
Mud was left with the sighs and trembles
watching his hard earned money go
Flushes fell on Gold like water
tens they paired and paired again
but the aces only flew through heaven
and the diamond jack called no man friend
The diamond queen saw Muds ordeal
began to think of her long lost son
fell to her knees with a mother's mercy
prayed to the angels every one
The diamond queen, she prayed and prayed
and the diamond angel filled Muds hole
the wicked king of clubs himself
fell in face down in front of Gold
now three kings come to Clubs command
but the angels from the sky did ride
three kings up on the streets of Gold
three fireballs on the muddy side
The club queen heard her husband's call
but Lord that queen of diamond's joy
when the outlaw in the heavenly hall
turned out to be a wandering boy
Now Mud he checked and Gold bet all
and Mud he raised and Gold did call
and the smile just melted off his face
when Mud turned over that diamond ace
Now here's what this story's told
if you feel like Mud you'll end up Gold
if you feel like lost, you'll end up found
so amigo, lay them raises down

I mentioned Townes in my blog a few days ago ... got some feedback there are people who never heard (of) him.

His voice isn't Townes' long suit... not even when he was alive.  But he was a great lyricist, had a way of winning over an audience, as well.... from the first time I ever saw him until many decades later when he was near death he kept the folks who paid to see him glad they did.

Him and old Guy Clark.

Jack

 

Occasionally the threads on LP take on a fervor that’s almost religious in nature.

All those dark forebodings about what winners do with their money, should do with it, all the sage pronouncements about whether there’s anyone in all Christendom who’d be wiser taking annuity rather than lump sum cash. Pronouncements about whether a hypothetical person spends too much on lottery tickets, or whether anyone should buy anything but a quick pick, or whether anyone should buy a quick pick.

Religious fervor. A certainty that a particular opinion is penultimate in wisdom for no better reason than the fact that the person doing the posting espouses that view.

Got me thinking about zealotry in general, and that got me thinking about the Inquisition. Not the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions with which we’re all familiar with their torture chambers and human sacrifices of mainly Jews and Gypsies, but the earlier one.

In 1095, his Holiness Pope Urban declared a Crusade against Carcassonne, and Beziers, in France as part of an overall war against heresy. The particular targets of this early Inquisition movement were the Cathars, the Good Men, as they called themselves. They’d drifted somewhat away from the doctrine of the true Church a few centuries before Martin Luther.

The citizens of Beziers already knew a bit about Crusaders. When this army arrived they closed the gates and refused them entry. The pope excommunicated the city en masse, and the siege began.

When the Crusaders took the town the Bishop Renaud de Montperoux and the Abbot of Citeaux were asked how they were to distinguish which were the heretics among the captives. They replied, “God will find his own.” They ordered every person in the city to be slain. 20,000 people were put to the sword.

That was the origin for the popular US Special Forces tattoo during the Vietnam War. “Kill ‘em all and let God sort them out!”

Anyway, I’m thinking that’s the most appropriate solution to this endless debate about whether people ought to take lump sum cash, or annuity. We need to somehow get the opposing side to have a convention in some medium sized town, bottle them up there and put them to the sword.

End this thing once and for all without taking any prisoners.

Jack

http://www.jerrysires.com/Jsb/entrance.html

Morning blogsters:

I was going over some pressing matters in my mind this morning, got to thinking about a song by my old acquaintance, Jerry Sires.

When I knew Jerry he was living on a hardscrabble farm out toward Granger, Texas, doing carpentry work, roofing, teaching some Industrial Arts classes at the Granger High School when they couldn't find a certified teacher to do it.

It was generally hard times.

 

I Could Sell Bibles

I've got a good woman who always treats me right

but she was saying just the other night

that she wants me to be happy

and she'll do what she can do,

But she'd like to see me pull my own weight

in a year or two.

And I know that I could sell Bibles if I had to

but that kind of thing would take me too far away

from the things that I love and the good things I got used to

hanging around the poor farm all day.

I built us this shelter and grow most of our own food

but this day and age that kind of thing just ain't no good

'cause you can lose it in a moment or just overnight

if your life ain't insured or things don't work out right.

I strum on my guitar and make lunch for the kids

Sounds like the story of a man on the skids.

But you know, it has it's moments even for a man

if he can just find something to do with his hands.

But I know that I could sell Bibles if I had to

but that kind of thing would take me too far away

from the ones that I love and the good things I got used to

hanging around the poor farm all day.

By Jerry Sires

Strange as it seems these days, almost everyone I used to know took a shot at selling Bibles door-to-door for a while.  Sort of makes me wonder if kids are still doing that.

Jack

Suspend disbelief, maybe.

It doesn't cost anything.  Look in the dark places under rocks and behind the refrigerator.

Things don't have to make sense to be true.  They don't have to follow the rules someone told you the universe works according to.

For instance, can jackpots won be somehow different from all the draws nobody wins?

I don't know.

But I do know if you watch the numbers that win, as opposed to the ones that roll, you'll find after you do it a while that those dark places having numbers lurking, behaving as they oughtn't.

Here are the jackpots from the 24th of October:

10/24/2005 01-05-09-29, Bonus: 24
10/24/2005 06-20-21-27-29
10/24/2005 03-13-33-36-39
10/24/2005 01-06-13-28-39
10/22/2005 02-06-13-24-27
10/22/2005 05-15-20-22-30, Extra: 02

Maybe those jackpot winner numbers bear watching more than we generally do, even if doing so admits the world is a bit insane.  But aren't we all?

Jack

 

 

 

Boats to Build

-

It's time for a change
I'm tired of that same ol same
the same ol words the same ol lines
the same ol tricks and the same ol rhymes

-

Days precious days
roll in and out like waves
I got boards to bend I got planks to nail
I got charts to make I got seas to sail

-
I'm gonna build me a boat
with these two hands
it'll be a fair curve
from a noble plan
let the chips fall where they will
cause I've got boats to build

-

Sails are just like wings
the wind can make em sing
songs of life songs of hope
songs to keep your dreams afloat 

- 

Shores distant shores
there's where I'm headed for
got the stars to guide my way
sail into the light of day

-

Guy Clark/ Verlon Thompson

-

I've always had a lot of respect for Guy Clark and his songs.  He's one of those singers who managed to survive mostly by writing great songs that end up being sung by others more popular, but frequently with less talent.

Used to see him on tour with Townes Van Zandt during Towne's last years when things weren't going to rosy for Townes.  A couple of tired old men sitting on stools in front of fifty or a hundred people taking turns playing and singing, and drinking.

Old Guy's looking a lot better these days.  Maybe Townes was dragging him down without meaning to.

Jack

 

Finally got a hint of what's had the cats so spooked the past couple of days.  An animal with some altitude to it.... unusually tall or limber coyote, tall dog, or something else marking the truck tire during the night. 

Inside the front fence where the felines tend to think of themselves as safe except from owls and hawks.

Guess it's time for some mitigation.

Jack

 

 

I've always had a lot of respect for Roger Miller's ability to use his rapier wit to cut through human foibles and folly.  He loved to laugh at himself and the human condition.  I'd like to have known the man in life.  I always get a few laughs and an uplift listening to him even after I've heard a song countless times:

Kansas City Star

Got a letter just this mornin'

it was postmarked Omaha

It was typed and neatly written

offerin' me this better job

Better job at higher wages

expences paid and a car

But I'm on TV here locally

and I can't quit I'm a star

Kansas City star

that's what I are

yodel-de-la-de

you oughta see my car

Drive a big old Cadillac with wired wheels

got rhinestones on the spokes

I got credit down at the grocery store

and my barber tells me jokes

And I'm the No 1 attraction

in ever' super market parking lot

I'm the king of Kansas City

no thanks Omaha thanks a lot

[ trumpet ]

Haha I come on TV a grinnin'

wearin' pistols and a hat

It's a kiddie show

and I'm a hero of the younger set

I'm the No 1 attraction

in ever' super market parking lot

I'm the king of Kansas City

no thanks Omaha thanks a lot

 

Kansas City star

that's what I are

yodel-de-la-de

you oughta see my car

Drive a big old Cadillac with wired wheels

got rhinestones on the spokes

I got credit down at the grocery store

and my barber tells me jokes

And I'm the No 1 attraction

in ever' super market parking lot

I'm the king of Kansas City

no thanks Omaha thanks a lot

[ trumpet ]

Kansas City star that's what I are...

Roger Miller

 

Morning blogsters:

It's one of those kinds of mornings here when the toast refuses to exit the vehicle, has to be dragged out kicking and screaming in pieces in a futile effort to fool a person into believing he isn't grateful for that toast.

Meanwhile, it's also one of those mornings when I opened the door to let the cats out and they bulleted onto the porch, skidded to a halt and reversed direction finding things much more interesting indoors.

Something ugly was out there during the night.

I scrutinized the ground out looking for tracks, any kind of sign of what they sensed, found not a hint.  I remembered that one of them sleeping in the window growled a few times, maybe at something out there, maybe defending the window position from one of the others indoors.

But usually those window, one outside one inside mock battles involving strange intruder felines outdoors include threats and hisses from the one outside.  There was none of that.

But there were also no coyote, bear, bobcat tracks or scat.  Whatever has those cats spooked didn't leave any sign.

Halloween coming.  Maybe they saw somebody wearing a mask.

Jack

Someone knowing about Navajo Rug and liking it well enough to say so got me enthused about some Tom Russell. 

If I were able to maintain a structure of songs I like best that would hold up through listening to someone else I like equally well, Tom Russell's songs would be right in there with my other favorites. 

They'd be sliding up and down being my 'most' favorite, then being replaced by the next like disks on a jukebox.

Here's one that lingers as 'one of my favorites' well past when it quits playing.

What do you want from me? 

This old Martin guitar was made in 1946.

It's cracked and scratched and splintered by fingernails and picks

It's been my close companion since 1962;

Please don't ask me to decide between this guitar and you.

What do you want from me?  What do you want?

Do I have to give you everything?

What do you want from me?  What do you want?

Do I have to give you everything?

All my friends quit drinking

You can't smoke nowhere no more.

I think I'll take up smoking

Though I've never smoked before.

Getting tired of decaf coffee

I crave high-test in my cup

Too old to die of boredom

But I'm too old to grow up.

I've unloaded boxcars

Sold Bibles door to door.

I'd be rich and famous

If I weren't unknown and poor.

Blessed are the poor in spirit

For  they'll possess the earth

But the day I hand the world to you

You'll ask me what it's worth.

What do you want from me?  What do you want?

Do I have to give you everything?

What do you want from me?  What do you want?

Do I have to give you everything?

 

Tom Russell and Peter Case

From the Rose of San Juaquin album.

Well blogsters, I gots to run into town to buy lottery tickets and see what else the spirit moves me to do.

You folks have a fine whatever it is you're having.

Jack

 

One of the savorable aspects of being alone is the way the mind wanders according to incidental, routine events.  I've noticed that when I'm cooking up a breakfast of eggs up on whiskey toast with home fries there's only one song starts running through my head:

Navajo Rug
Tom Russell

Well it's three eggs up on whiskey toast
Homefries on the side
Wash it down with truckstop coffee
Burns up your inside

Just a Canyon, Colorado diner
And a waitress I did love
We sat in the back 'neath an old stuffed bear
And a worn out Navajo rug

Well old Jack the boss he'd close at six
Then it's Katie bar the door
She'd pull down that Navajo rug
And she'd spread it 'cross the floor

Hey I saw l ightning in the sacred mountains
Saw the dance of the turtle doves
Lyin' next to Katie
On that old Navajo rug

Ai-yi-yi, Katie, shades of red and blue
Ai-yi- yi, Katie
Whatever became of the Navajo rug and you?

Well I saw old Jack about a year ago
He said the place burned to the ground
And all he saved was an old bear tooth
And Katie she left town

But Katie she got her a souvenir too
Jack spat out a tabacco plug
He said "You shoulda seen her runnin' through the smoke
Draggin' that Navajo rug."

Ai-yi-yi, Katie, shades of red and blue
Ai-yi- yi, Katie
Whatever became of the Navajo rug and you?

Now everytime I cross the sacred mountains
And lightning breaks above
It always takes me back in time
To my long lost Katie love

Ah but everything keeps on movin'
And everyone's on the go
They don't make things that last anymore
Like a double-woven Navajo
 

Katie, shades of red and blue
Ay-yi- yi, Katie
Whatever became of the Navajo rug and you?

Tom Russell
From the album Song Of The West - The Cowboy Collection 1997

For some reason that song always gets me vaguely reliving one or another of several incidents, 1958-59, working on a ranch outside Kenna, NM, as an impressionable youth with a '40 Model Chevi.

I think the first time I ever heard Navajo Rug must have been mid-1980s in Austin, Texas.  Bill and Bonnie Hearne were on tour performing in a small place somewhere over west of the University.  I'm not sure whether Tom Russell wrote it, or someone else.  It's been a Jerry Jeff Walker song, Ian Tyson, in addition to Bill and Bonnie Hearne and Tom R.

I do know I once spent half a day moseying around Canyon Colorado, which is mostly empty spaces, looking around the weeds for evidence a diner was once there and burned down.

Life's a good place to spend it, amigos.  Full belly of eggs up on whiskey toast, home fries on the side to all of you this morning.

Jack

 

 

 

A while back an entrepreneur who shares a number of my research interests decided the world wouldn't be quite complete unless one of my tomes was published hardback as part of a fancy set, to include Frank Dobie's Apache Gold and Yaqui Silver, McKenna's Black Range Tales, and a book the man's written, himself, about his researches and treks into the Gila, with maybe, William French's Reflections of a Western Ranchman, and Ben Kemp's Trail Dust and Saddle Leather.

We had a few meetings and came to an agreement, with me promising to burn a CD with my manuscript files aboard, and the PDF files used for the final submission for the paperbound copy.

I hadn't used the CD burner on my comp for some time.  But I began the process of doing what I'd promised, discovered that the comp evidently thinks it's burning CDs, but then it either can't read the CD it just made, or it hasn't actually burned the files to it.  Sometimes it reads the files being on it, sometimes it won't recognize a CD it's claimed it burned is even in the drive.  But sometimes the CD can be taken to another comp and reads fine.  But once it burns the files onto the CD, or thinks it has, the CD is unwilling to 'fess up and admit the files are on it about half the time.

Each of these events required about a half hour or more with all the pretended burning, copy and pasting, then asking the comp if it can read the files, while it decides whether it's going to do one of the spontaneous crashes it's prone to in the midst of one project or another.  Something you just get used to.

So I burned up a lot of CDs and gratitude affirmations, forgiveness affirmations and ended up with nothing in the way of files on any of them that I'd feel any confidence sending to the man who needs some files he can depend on.

Ah well.  Finally dragged out my backup CD that I created when the original manuscript in submission form went out for print in paperback and decided I'm going to have to just belly up to the bar and trust the US  Mail to get it to the man, and depend on him get it back to me after he's made a copy.

Sheeze.  Sometimes computers are a blessing too joyous to really digest and appreciate according to their worth.

Jack