T-Bone Burnett wrote and recorded one of the strangest songs I’ve ever heard,
“The Ballad of Frank Cash and the Morning Paper”. A sort of quantum song, way before
quantum-time.
Old Frank Cash, living in a cheap motel somewhere opens the morning paper one day,
everything as it should be, but in the sports section he sees the results of next weeks
game. He keeps an eye peeled at the next game, and it’s just as reported.
So Frank rushes out, borrows lots of money to bet on the next newspaper
prognostication…wins big…does all the things people do when they win a
jackpot…moves out of the motel.
When he’s spent up all his winnings on women, house by the lake, Italian shoes, he opens
the paper to go again. Paper has the ‘normal’, yesterday results. Frank suddenly realizes
it was the paper at the fleabag motel with the gold mine…. Rushes over there, knocks on
the door. When the guy answers, Frank asks to see the paper…tries to push his way in.
The new occupant pulls a .45, they struggle, and the occupant ends up dead.
Next scene, Frank is in front of a judge….”Your Honor, all of this isn’t really happening.
This is all just something dreamed up by this guy, T-Bone Burnette. And what’s more, I
don’t believe in him!”
They turned Frank Cash loose, on the grounds that what he said didn’t make any sense.
So, for being such a good sport, Burnette gave him back all his winnings, fixed him up with
a good wife, and he's going let Frank Cash's first son become president.
That’s sort of the way I see the lottery numbers working.
Jack
