Highway 80 Stories

Highway 80 Stories Trailer

I’m David Leone, I’m a songwriter and storyteller, and I’d like to introduce you to Highway 80 Stories. This ongoing project is a series of connected stories and songs about the region of the South that Highway 80 runs through in Texas, Louisiana, Missisippi, Alabama, and Georgia. I’m from Shreveport, Louisiana, and Highway 80 runs right through downtown.

Two of my favorite authors are William Faulkner and Larry McMurty, and I was inspired by their example to write about my region; its history and the people who settled this part of the South.

There are songs and stories about Southern history and culture, major issues like the Civil Rights Struggle, Slavery, and the Civil War, as well as stuff like moonshine and bootlegging. How this history impacted the lives of my fictional characters is the primary theme of my project.

And if you like what you hear and read, here’s how you can support Highway 80 Stories. You can download songs from Bandcamp or, better still, subscribe and receive unlimited streaming of the entire catalog as well as subscriber-only features. You can also subscribe to my Patreon page and get exclusive video performances of the songs and stories each week.

Thank you.

Introduction

The Highway 80 Stories project is about the region of the South that US 80 runs through in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia

I’m from Shreveport, Louisiana, which is smack dab in the middle of Highway 80’s route. And since I am a songwriter and a fan of authors like William Faulkner and Larry McMurtry, I was inspired to write a collection of songs about the history and the people who settled this region of the South.

All my stories and characters are fictional and while the historical events I write about are real, the characters and specifics of their lives are all creations of my imagination.

There are songs and stories about southern history and culture, from things like the Civil Rights struggle, slavery, the Civil War, as well as stuff like moonshine and bootlegging. How these historical events and culture impacted the lives of my fictitious community is the primary theme of the Highway 80 Stories project.

So, please take a look around, read a story or two, listen to the songs, and I hope you like what you hear.

The Raney Family, Part 2

Vernon Raney (1910-1997)

Vernon was the first Raney to grow to adulthood in Mississippi, the rest of the Raney family settled in north Georgia as early as 1748 when Thomas Rainey, Lonsom’s grandfather was born (Lonsom would later change the spelling, dropping the “i” from the name).

The first Raney, Lonegan, a Scots-Irish immigrant, entered colonial America in 1741 at Virginia as an indentured servant. As soon as he was released from his labor, five years later, he traveled, with his pregnant wife, through the Appalachian mountains eventually settling in the north Georgia mountains. His first son, Thomas, was born in a small log cabin in December 1748. The Raney family always made whiskey and in fact the copper bowl still they used was brought to America by Lonegan (see song, “Lonsom Raney 1828“).

Vernon made one major change in the moonshine, he began to age it in oak barrels, producing a more refined product which he sold to Memphis big shots at a premium price. Vernon remained a bachelor until the age of 49 when he married Molly Motts, just 23 years old, and pregnant with their first son, Lonsom, or Lonnie as he was known.

Molly Raney was an ambitious young woman, seeing that the bootlegging business was doomed as liquor laws were repealed making it easy to purchase whiskey. She also realized that the younger generation was interested in marijuana and other recreational drugs. Her oldest, Lonnie, became the county sheriff, the other son, Ronnie became Maggie’s right hand man in their drug distribution business. Molly oversaw the entire distribution network as Ronnie handled the day-to-day operations. They moved large amounts of pot, pills, and narcotics all through Mississippi and Memphis, with Lonnie responsible for insulating the enterprise from law enforcement (see song, “Louanne in Vicksburg“).

Over the decades from 1957 through the ‘70s Vernon became more and more detached from day-to-day reality, turning a blind eye to Molly’s drug business while he continued to make small batches of his whiskey and selling a little but mainly giving it away to a group of his old friends who would gather at his old mountain cabin drinking, playing cards or dominoes; smoking cigars or spitting tobacco juice on pot-bellied stove and telling tall tales.

In the spring of 1997, at the age of 87 Vernon Raney died in his sleep after producing the last of his tobacco gold whiskey.

’57 Fleetwood to Memphis
(F. D. Leone, Jr.)

Vernon took pride in his small batch corn whiskey
Made it in his great-great-granddaddy‘s copper bowl
He would age it five years in oak barrels
It came out tobacco gold

He sold it to Memphis judges and politicians
Hundred dollar bottles in back alley deals
Come a long way from his great-great-granddaddy
And those Ulster hills

On and on and on and on it goes
They are tryin’ to get somewhere
On and on and on and on it goes
They just know they ain’ quite there

1741 his people came to Virginia
Indentured servants just tryin’ to stay alive
Seven long years they learned one hard lesson
Do what you have to: survive

On and on and on and on it goes
They are tryin’ to get somewhere
On and on and on and on it goes
They just know they ain’ quite there

Vern drove a ’57 Fleetwood to Memphis
Tailgate riding low with gallon cans and Mason jars
Coming back empty he’d open up that Caddy
Just to hear the V8 roar

On and on and on and on it goes
They are tryin’ to get somewhere
On and on and on and on it goes
They just know they ain’ quite there

© 2017 Frank David Leone, Jr./Highway 80 Music (ASCAP). The songs and stories on the Highway 80 Stories website are works of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Vernon Raney and Molly Motts

Vernon Raney was 49 years old when he met Molly Motts, and didn’t need to get married, but that is just what he ended up doing; to a girl less than half his age.

The Raney family were bootleggers, had been making clear whiskey for more than a century before Vernon took over the still (see song, “Lonsom Raney 1828“). He made a change, though, from the family recipe, he began to age the distilled product in charred oak barrels, turning the clear shine to a golden tobacco color, and mellowing the taste considerably (see song, “’57 Fleetwood to Memphis“).

Molly Motts, from Delta, Louisiana, just across the river from Vicksburg, was a precocious young woman, who was looking for any way out of Delta when she met Vernon at a party on the Mississippi bank of the river, just outside Vicksburg (see song, “When Molly Motts Married Vernon Raney“).

Long story short, Vernon and Molly got married; Molly took over the moonshine business and turned it into a drug enterprise. With the help of her two sons, they established a distribution network from Natchez to Memphis (see songs, “Louanne in Vicksburg” and “Molly on the Mountain“).

You could say that Vernon never knew what he was getting into when he married Molly, but then again, he was never known to say a cross word about Molly or their life together.

Vernon and Molly
(F. D. Leone, Jr.)

Vernon had his whiskey business
And his V-8 coupe
But he felt something was missing
He wasn’t sure just what to do
Wasn’t sure what to do

There was a party at the river
Vernon drove by real slow
Molly was tall and slender
He felt something inside let go
Something inside let go

Vernon was old enough to be her daddy
Molly was wiser than her years
She wanted more than what a small town could deliver
Vernon was her ticket out of there
Her ticket out of there

Once a month he went to Memphis
Delivering a load of shine
He did okay with his whiskey business
And showed Molly a real good time
They had a real good time

They were always seen together
Then her belly began to show
Vernon said let’s put it on paper
She said I’m ready, let’s go
I’m ready, let’s go

Vernon was old enough to be her daddy
Molly was wiser than her years
She wanted more than what a small town could deliver
Vernon was her ticket out of there
Her ticket out of there

Molly gave him three kids
Two sons and a daughter
She had plans beyond his
Vernon never fought her
He never fought her

Molly took over the business
Began selling pot and more
Vernon stopped going to Memphis
Spent his time down at the store
Spent his time down at the store

Vernon was old enough to be her daddy
Molly was wiser than her years
She wanted more than what a small town could deliver
Vernon was her ticket out of there
Her ticket out of there

© 2019 Frank David Leone, Jr./Highway 80 Music (ASCAP). The songs and stories on the Highway 80 Stories website are works of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Margaret “Molly” Motts (1937-2015)

Molly Motts was sexually molested by her step-father in Delta, Louisiana from the age of 12. But Molly is resilient and refuses to identify herself as a victim. As soon as she was grown up enough she crossed the river to Vicksburg and attracted the attention of a prominent Mississippi man, Vernon Raney. Molly marries him and over time becomes the matriarchal figure of the Raney family whose criminal enterprises began with bootlegging and under Molly’s leadership branched out into marijuana and pills.

Molly’s Got a Secret
(F. D. Leone, Jr.)

Molly’s got a secret, a deep dark secret
She ain’t told, but don’t know if she can keep it
It’s burn’d a hole in her heart, all the way up to the skin
Once it’s out, it can’t be put back again

She’s protected him for so long
She knows he hurt her, knows it was wrong
She still feels guilty all the same
Even though she knows he’s the only one to blame

Molly’s got a secret from years before
She can’t forget it, can’t live with it no more
She drinks a little too much, laughs a little too loud
When his name comes up she don’t wanna be around

First chance she got she put Delta behind her
Won’t let what that man did define her
What happened in Delta she’s buried it deep
Her skin is thicker now, it’s a secret she can keep

Otis Odom (1914-1960)

Donald Motts (1911-1977) and Bessie Ferguson (1914-1966) married in 1928, and then had a daughter, Molly, in 1931. However by this time Donald had begun an affair with another woman, and ended his marriage to Bessie shortly after Molly was born.

Not long after, Bessie married Otis Odom (1914-1960), a decent enough guy, but one with a nasty streak. Bessie thought he was a good man,. to raise a daughter by another man as his own. And because of this she was prone to accept behavior from Otis that otherwise would be unacceptable. Hence she looked the other way when she had suspicions that Otis paid a little too much attention to Molly as she grew older.

As soon as she was old enough, around the age of 15 or 16, Molly ran away from home in Delta, Louisiana, across the river to Vicksburg, Mississippi. Here she attracted the attention of one of the larger land-owners, Vernon Raney (1910-1997). The Raneys were an old Mississippi family, known primarily for their moonshine, but also as a large farming family.

Vernon loved Molly dearly and when she told him of the abuse she had suffered from Otis Odom, Vernon knew immediately that he would kill Odom, which he did in August, 1960.

When Vernon Raney Put Otis Odom Down
(F. D. Leone, Jr.)

When Vernon learned about,
How Molly had been abused;
He swore to himself what he’d do.
He knew the one who done it,
Though it could not be proved;
He was sure, Molly told the truth.
Was an August afternoon,
Molly and Vern at the river;
When she began to talk.
Vernon did not interrupt her,
Just let Molly surrender
The whole sordid story as they walked.

Then she just stopped talkin’,
They stood at the shore;
The still air held her last words.
They turned for home and supper,
The scratch of knife and fork;
Was the only sound that they heard.
Vernon asked around Vicksburg,
Got the dope on Otis Odom;
He’d choose the right time and place.
Make it look like self defense,
Wouldn’t take much to goad him;
Knowin’ Otis, he’d wanna save face.

Vernon cleaned his .45,
Said, “I’ll be gone an hour;”
Set his jaw, an’ walked out to his truck.
Molly finished washin’ dishes,
It was full dark now;
Sat down wi’ th’ corn she’d set aside to husk.
Vern caught up with Odom,
At a dive bar in Vicksburg;
Vern smiled at his good luck.
“You’re Otis Odom, ain’t ya?”
“Yep, since my birth;”
“I’ve got somp’n for ya in my truck.”

Vern followed Otis out,
Grabbed a hay hook on some lumber;
Split th’ bastard’s skull in two.
Pulled Odom to his truck,
Chained him to the bumper;
Dragged th’ body to the bayou.
Tossed the hay hook out th’ windah,
Put his truck in reverse;
Then jus’ sat there, the engine runnin’.
After two weeks of lookin’,
Vern talked t’ th’ Shurf;
“This August heat sure is somp’n’.”

© 2023 Frank David Leone, Jr./Highway 80 Music (ASCAP). The songs and stories on the Highway 80 Stories website are works of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Molly Motts Raney Looks Back With Regret

Molly Motts was born in Delta, Louisiana, a tiny hamlet at the Louisiana-Mississippi border, just across the river from Vicksburg. Because of a difficult home life, she often dreamed of getting out of Delta. Vicksburg just across the river looked like a dream garden to her and she thought she’d do anything to get there. She did: marrying Vernon Raney, bootlegger, more than twice her age; but a good husband to her (see song, “When Molly Motts Married Vernon Raney“) .

They had three children, Lonnie, Ronnie and Ginny. Molly was an ambitious girl and decided early on to piggy-back a drug distribution business onto Vernon’s already prospering bootlegging enterprise (see song, “’57 Fleetwood to Memphis“).

Despite the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, many states continued to outlaw alcohol for several more decades. But bootleg whiskey began going out of style in the mid-‘60s, by which time liquor by the drink had become legal in most states, and there was less and less demand for moonshine except out of nostalgia. Transitioning, first, to marijuana and then harder drugs, seemed to make good business sense to Molly.

Molly got her oldest son, Lonnie elected sheriff as a way to offer protection to her and her second son, Ronnie, as they operating the drug business with little interference from law enforcement. This they did and quickly established a lucrative distribution network of dealers from Natchez to Memphis (see song, “Louanne in Vicksburg“).

Molly lived to see both of her sons die violent deaths: Ronnie was murdered by his wife, Louanne Bowden, and Lonnie was killed in a stand-off with U.S. Marshalls and DEA agents. As the drug network wound down, Molly grew into her role as grandmother to Ginny’s children, living a quiet life in Vicksburg.

The second summer after they were married, Vernon built Molly a small cabin in the north Georgia mountains, on a section of the old Raney homestead (see song “Lonsom Raney 1828“). Molly would often go there as a retreat. This song describes her last visit there, when she looks back on her life and contemplates the impact on her family of the choices she has made.

Molly On the Mountain
(F. D. Leone, Jr.)

Molly was at her cabin on the mountain
Thinking ‘bout her life, and all she’d done
A jelly glass of Vernon’s tobacco whiskey
Sparkled in the late October sun
She thought back to the day she married Vernon Raney
Not yet 21, June of ‘58
Three months pregnant, walking down the aisle
To a man more than twice her age

Molly on the mountain, don’t wanna come down
Molly on the mountain, don’t wanna be found
Molly on the mountain, gonna leave it all behind
Molly on the mountain, knows it’s time

The cabin had a chill, she built a fire
With the last of the wood Lonnie’d split
Lonnie’s gone, his brother Ronnie too
Molly blamed herself for all of it
She’d grown harder through the years from that life
Harder, than she could describe
The pot and drugs, the men she fought, some she killed
All she’d ever done was survive

Molly on the mountain, don’t wanna come down
Molly on the mountain, don’t wanna be found
Molly on the mountain, gonna leave it all behind
Molly on the mountain, knows it’s time

Ginny was the one who turned out okay
Molly sure loves those three grandkids
She made sure to keep Ginny away from it all
That’s one good thing that she did
Lonnie’s Donald and Vern, went to East Mississippi
Took off when things got hot in Vicksburg
They’re selling pills and meth to the kids at Starkville
That’s what they learned from her

Molly on the mountain, don’t wanna come down
Molly on the mountain, don’t wanna be found
Molly on the mountain, gonna leave it all behind
Molly on the mountain, knows it’s time

Molly’s great grandma, Mamie, was a conjure woman
She knew plants for curing or killing dead
Mamie passed it down to Molly’s grandpa Motts
That’s where Molly got it, was what they said
Molly pressed the jelly glass against her cheek
It was time to drink that whiskey down
She looked into the woods, found that old maple tree
Watched a yellow leaf drift to the ground

Molly on the mountain, don’t wanna come down
Molly on the mountain, don’t wanna be found
Molly on the mountain, gonna leave it all behind
Molly on the mountain, knows it’s time

_{© 2019 Frank David Leone, Jr./Highway 80 Music (ASCAP). The songs and stories on the Highway 80 Stories website are works of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.}

Forrest Patton (1930-1963)

Charlotte Raney Patton (1902-1994) was the only daughter of Wyatt Raney (1874-1934) and Belinda Barnes (1880-1902), who died giving birth to Charlotte. Wyatt raised her alone and would tell her stories about the South including the Civil War, or as he called it, The War of Yankee Aggression. Wyatt was embittered because of the losses he’d suffered in his life: the loss of his leg in the Spanish American War; the loss of his closest cousin August Raney; the loss of his wife in childbirth. Then his son enlisted in WWI against his father’s wishes, only to be killed in action in 1918.

Charlotte married James “Jackson” Patton (1892-1963) in 1919. The name of Nathan Bedford Forrest was revered in the Patton home. James’s grandmother, Margaret Mary Forrest (1848-1878), was the daughter of Jesse Anderson Forrest (1834-1889), the brother of Nathan Bedford Forrest, making Nathan James’s great-granduncle.

Jesse Anderson Forrest was an American slave trader, Confederate cavalry colonel, livery stable owner, and cotton plantation owner of Tennessee and Arkansas. Before the war, the Forrest brothers were engaged in the slave trade at Memphis and up and down the Mississippi River. Jesse Forrest fought alongside his brother Lt. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest in the American Civil War, as well as under command of other Confederates such as Gideon J. Pillow.

James and Charlotte named their three sons after Nathan B. Forrest: Nathan Patton (1920-1987); Bedford Patton (1922-1979); Forrest Patton (1930-1963), and named their daughter Jessica, or as she was called, Jessie, after the great-grandfather.

However, their youngest son, Forrest was closer to his mother’s side of the family, the Raneys, and joined up with them in their bootleg whiskey business. But all the Pattons were true sons of the South, and this song is about that culture and the specific kind of character it produced.

SONS OF DIXIE
(F. D. Leone, Jr.)

By now they’d set up in Mi’sippy
Charlotte and her sons
Jack Patton was on a oil rig
Off the coast of Galveston
She named ’em for a mystic kin
Shrouded in tales of glory
Nathan, ‘n’ Bedford, ‘n’ Forrest
The subject of this story
Look away, look away
Sons of Dixie be not dismayed

Oh, there was a sister, too
But she don’t figure in this tale
Naw, Forrest is the where things went
But tonight he’s in a Vicksburg jail
No need to wonder what he did
Same as always: a still and shine
His name may’ve been Patton
But he’s a Raney by design
Look away, look away
Sons of Dixie be not dismayed

Same silent stubborn look
Same native competence
Making money outside the law
For a Raney just common sense
He was marked ‘n’ carried with him
A not so hidden indelible scar:
Like all southerners, th’ only Americans
Who ever lost a war
Look away, look away
Sons of Dixie be not dismayed

Like every southern boy Forrest held
In his sacred memory
Th’ hour before Pickett’s charge
When there was still a dream of victory
His shoulder held a permanent chip
An ancestral grudge against mankind
Bound by an old fraternal feud
His side the one maligned
Look away, look away
Sons of Dixie be not dismayed

He loved brawling, believed in God
Feared the fire of hell
Living outside the bonds of men
Closed in a personal citadel
He was born with the Depression
Came of age with bebop and beatniks
Fast cars and fast women
And always whiskey … if the shoe fits …
Look away, look away
Sons of Dixie be not dismayed

And the shoe fit very well
It’s one that’s well-worn
It’s all the Raneys held on to
Long after family ties were torn
But tonight he’s iin a Vicksburg cell
Smoking, lazy on the cot
Waiting for someone to come with bail
Maybe they would, prob’ly not
Look away, look away
Sons of Dixie be not dismayed

Donald Raney (1978) and Vern Raney (1980)

The lineage of Crawford Harper and the Donald and Vern Raney, is a little complicated. They were distantly related to each other, although they did not know it at the time of the events described in this song. In order to set the stage we have to go back to Alabama, before the Civil war.

Celsie Crawford Monroe (1844-1936) was born into slavery but was freed by Will Monroe, her father, a wealthy white planter, in 1863 as a result of Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.

Celsie’s mother, Jessie Crawford (1828-1905), was a slave from a neighboring plantation of whom Will Monroe had grown quite fond. Monroe made sure Jessie was provided for and also insisted that she be freed in 1863 by paying off her owner Carson Crawford.

Celsie was what was called a “yellow gal”, and quite beautiful. Once she was freed at age 19, Celsie began seeing a white man, Joshua Tate (1828-1867), and their relationship developed into a common law marriage, although the possibility of such a union being recognized was not possible at the time. They had one child, a son, Tullison Tate, “Monroe’s Tully” (see song “King Cotton“).

In 1872 Celsie’s first actual marriage was to a African-American man, Jesse Harper (1850-1922), and Celsie and Jesse enjoyed a long and happy union, raising four children, seven grandchildren, and many great-grandchildren. However, Celsie’s oldest child, Tully, was raised by his spinster Aunt Ruth, his father’s sister.

Donald and Vernon Raney were distant descendants of Tully Tate, his daughter marrying Virgil Raney, whose son Vernon was Donald and Vernon’s grandfather. Their father Lonnie Raney, had been a crooked Warren County sheriff, who was killed in a shootout with U.S. Marshalls, during a drug raid. The Raneys were descendants of Lonsom Raney, longtime moonshiner in North Georgia (see song “Lonsom Raney 1828“).

Lonnie’s generation of Raneys had become major players in the drug trade stretching from Memphis to Natchez, with Lonnie’s mother Molly Motts Raney acting as matriarch of the family drug enterprise (see songs “When Molly Motts Married Vernon Raney” and “Louanne in Vicksburg“). Donald and Vernon were Molly’s grandchildren, who were trying to carry on the family business, albeit on a much smaller scale, in Meridian, Mississippi.

One of Celsie Monroe’s great-grandchildren, William Crawford Harper (1942-2001), had marched from Selma to Montgomery in 1965 (see song “Crossin’ the Edmund Pettus Bridge“). Crawford Harper was Willie’s grandson, and this song describes the events of Crawford’s first summer home from college, when he visited his grandpa in Meridian, Mississippi.

Meridian
(F. D. Leone, Jr.)

Crawford Harper was in Starkville
Mississippi State
He’d be the first in the Harper family
Who might graduate

His Grandpa Willie lived in Meridian
Crawford spent the summer, wanting to earn
He’d heard about two fellas with a business
That’s how Crawford met Donald and Vern

The Raneys were from North Georgia
Moonshiners back in the hills
When they came down off that mountain
They were selling pot and pills

When Crawford met up with the Raneys
Vern gave him a duffle bag full of meth
Told him how much money to deliver
Crawford could keep the rest

One night Grandpa Willie found his stash
Asked him, “where’d you get this money?”
Crawford said, “don’t worry, old man,
I got it working for somebody”

Willie Harper had marched at Selma
Five miles from the same plantation
Where his ancestor had been a slave
Going back six generations

Willie asked, if that somebody
Might be named Donald and Vern
Crawford grabbed his duffel bag
Told him, “it ain’t none of your concern”

But see, Willie’d had a visit
From the Raneys late one night
Crawford owed them money
That had to be made right

Willie Harper was a welder
Vern said, “you’re gonna have a partner”
Willie looked at him with stone cold eyes
Said, “only name on that sign is Harper”

Under his welding gloves
Willie kept his service forty-five
He told Vern, “if you think I won’t use it,
You’re in for a surprise”

When Crawford came home, his grandpa told him
“The Raneys won’t be ‘round no more”
He took that duffel bag and torched it
Into a pile of ashes on the floor

Crawford Harper was back in Starkville
Mississippi State
He was the first in the Harper family
To graduate

The songs in the second part of the Raney family:

’57 Fleetwood to Memphis
Vernon and Molly
Molly’s Got a Secret
When Vernon Raney Put Otis Odum Down
Molly On The Mountain
Meridian

“Murder At the Sawmill”

The Holmes family operated a sawmill in Fannin County, Georgia, and had a standing order for timber to a fellow around Conyers. Sometime in the fall of 1889, Charles Henry Barnes (1861-1890) and the 2nd youngest Holmes son Henry Meriwether Holmes (1864-1890) partnered up on a load of wood to sell to another man, also in the Conyers area. They had agreed to stack the lumber at the sawmill until they had it all together before loading it up to haul south.

But unbeknownst to Henry, Charlie Barnes was coming around during the early morning hours with a negro man (Lucas Bohannon) and stealing some of the planks, but never enough to be noticed, for several nights running.

Another negro man, a friend of Bohannon’s, knew of this theft and happened to know old man Holmes, Joseph Henry, and gave him a head’s up. Whereupon, he and three of his other sons decided to stake out the sawmill and caught the Charlie in the act. Confronted, Charlie Barnes tried bluffing his way out, where upon he was shot by Chester Holmes the oldest of the sons. He didn’t intend to kill him, just wound him enough to stop him from getting away. However, the bullet pieced his lung, as well as a main artery and Charlie died of the wound a week later despite the best efforts of Sarah an Indian herbal healer.

The negro man Bohannon, who witnessed it all, was accused of murder by the Holmes family, taken into custody by the Sheriff of Fannin County, but later lynched by an angry mob. During this time it was unheard of for a negro accused of shooting a white man to be acquitted. His possible innocence was not considered.

LOCATION: North Georgia hills
PERIOD: March 1890
DRAMATIS PERSONAE: Charles Henry Barnes (1861-1890); Joseph Henry Holmes (1839-1907); Chester Williams Holmes (1861-1913); Thomas Heath Holmes (1862-1931); Dwight Dewey Holmes (1863-1909); Henry Meriwether Holmes (1864-1890).

Murder At the Sawmill
(F. D. Leone, Jr.)

Chilly night, early March;
Dwight stampin’ his feet; rubbin’ his head.
“Stop fidgeting,” Chester barked,
“They be here soon,” Joe Henry said.
“I wanna catch ’em in the act.”
Dwight slunk behind a tree and sat.
“It ain’t that cold, y’all keep still.”
They heard the truck a-coming up the hill.

“Chester, be ready at my word;
Dwight, come out from behind that tree.”
Thomas shot a stream of tobacco to the dirt;
It was probably going’ on about three.
There they were, Barnes and his man;
Lucas Bohannon and Barnes began,
Loading some of Holmes’s planed boards,
Into Herny Barnes’s flat bed Ford.

They came from Ireland and Scotland,
To the Appalachian mountains.
Fiercely independent, stubborn to the core;
Still fighting the same old bitter war.

Joe stepped into the grey light of the moon,
“Barnes I didn’t spect to see you here.”
“Hello Joe, I could say the same to you.”
Lucas did his best to disappear;
Chester shot Henry Barnes twice in the chest;
Joe Henry told the shurf it happened just like this:
“Lucas Bohannon killed Barnes with this here gun”
That was good enough for the shurf and everyone.

The mob had gone home for supper;
It was empty on the courthouse square.
Quiet and still, now that it was over;
The sweet smell of dogwood in the air.
A group of negros had come to town,
To collect and cut Brother Lucas down.
He was accused of shooting a white man;
Town didn’t care if they’d hung the right man.

They came from Ireland and Scotland,
To the Appalachian mountains.
One generation back they lost a bloody war;
They wanna keep things just like they were before.

© 2024 Frank David Leone, Jr./Highway 80 Music (ASCAP). The songs and stories on the Highway 80 Stories website are works of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

The Raney Family, Part 1

Lonsom Raney (1828-1923)

Lonsom Raney is the son of Scots-Irish immigrants to this country in the early 18th century. Originally the family spelled their name “Rainey” but Lonsom chose to drop the “i” and spell his name “Raney”.

In Colonial America, a whiskey-making tradition came ready-made with the arrival of Scots-Irish settlers from Northern Ireland’s Ulster region, beginning in the 1700s. They brought with them their taste for the drink and an understanding of how to make it. Lonsom Raney’s grandfather had always made his own whisky back in Scotland, and brought his still with him wherever he moved: first to Ireland then across the ocean to Virginia.

When Lonsom was a child, moonshine doubled as a cough suppressant and sore-throat treatment. To get little ones to tolerate whiskey, adults added something special to the cup: “It was pretty common with everybody in the mountains to put the old-fashioned peppermint-stick candy in it,” says Vernon Raney, Lonsom’s great-great-grandson.

Lonsom claimed to drink corn whiskey nearly every day of his life, often telling anyone in his vicinity, that moonshine was the only thing that kept him alive. He started making it while still a child. “I went to helpin’ my daddy make likker when I wuddn’t but nine years old,” he told Vernon. “My daddy just let me go to the still with him and I watched him and learnt it myself.”

Over the years, the law mostly left the Raneys alone. But Lonsom wasn’t always lucky. On at least four occasions, he served time in jail and in prison for violating liquor laws and evading taxes. But as it turned out, being locked up wasn’t bad for business. “That’s a good place to get customers,” Vernon said of his great-great-granddad’s time behind bars. “He would just take orders and fill them when he got out.”

Lonsom Raney died in 1923 at the age of 95. He had four descendants who carried on the Raney whisky tradition: Ransom (son), Royal (grandson), Virgil (great-grandson) and Vernon (great-great-grandson). Vernon would marry Molly Motts, who would later transition their bootlegging business into a drug enterprise (see songs “’57 Fleetwood to Memphis” and “Molly on the Mountain“).

Lonsom Raney 1828
(F.D. Leone, Jr)

1828 Lonsom Raney was born
Had a copper still an’ made clear corn
His great-granddad brought it from Scotland
Hid it in the hills on this Georgia mountain

Help’d his daddy make likker, Lonsom told
When he wuddn’t but nine years old
They’d load the wagon right at the still
Run that shine all through those hills

“Let me be, my sons and me
I’m just doing what I can
Let me be, my boys ‘n’ me
I’m just livin’ off the land”

He made it himself when his daddy died
Drank corn whiskey every day of his life
Claimed moonshine was what kept him alive
Lonsom Raney lived to ninety-five

“Let me be, my sons and me …

Five generations used that still
From Ransom to Royal, then Virgil
Lonsom died in nineteen twenty-three
Now it’s Vernon’s time with the recipe

“Let me be, my sons and me
I’m just doing what I can
Let me be, th’ boys ‘n’ me
I’m just livin’ off the land
I’m just doing what I can
Lemme be free Mr. Gov’mint man”

Ransom Raney (1848-1905)

Ransom Raney (1848-1905) was the oldest son born to Lonsom Raney (1828-1923) and was the first child born to the Raney family on their new mountain home in North Georgia after moving from southwestern North Carolina. Originally from Scotland the Raneys were one of many families who were encouraged to move from southern Scotland to northern Ireland, the Ulster region.

These people have been called Scots-Irish and made up a significant number of the immigrants to America in the 17th and 18th centuries. They brought with them much of their way of life, including distilling whiskey in copper stills, with the idea that this was their right, one for which they would not tolerate any infringement from government.

Scots-Irish tended to be impetuous and hotheaded, having been marginalized back in Ulster, they defied any easy definition. In fact, they bristled at others’ labels for them—”Irish,” “Irish Presbyterians,” “Northern Irish,” or even “Wild Irish.” Already twice transplanted, they had acquired a migratory habit. Once acquired, such habits are liable to persist; when the constraints of government caught up with them, these wayfarers often chose to move on.

This trait did not evaporate once they were in America and often they would keep moving west, keeping just ahead of civilization and legal constraints on their way of life.

This song is about three things: 1) the resilient nature of the Scots-Irish of the Appalachian mountains, 2) making whiskey and in general living off the land, and 3) fighting to preserve their way of life, not as part of a larger cause but for fiercely personal reasons.

Ransom Raney
(F.D.Leone, Jr.)

This is the tale of a mountain man
Lot of grit, lot of sand
Ransom Raney’s his name
From Scotland his people came

He was Lonsom Raney’s oldest son
1848 he was born
Stood at his daddy’s right hand
Taught to be a mountain man

Keep your mouth shut, your head down
Live off what comes from the ground
Make your shine, dig ginseng root
Live your own truth

When he was fifteen he went to war
Butternut was his uniform
Fought for what he could understand
Get the blue basterds off his land

Chickamauga; Second Vicksburg
Mansfield was the call he heard
But Ransom slipped away
From the fighting of the blue and grey

His year was up so he went back home
Grateful to get through it whole
In the winter of ’64
Ransom Raney was done with war

Back at the farm what he found
It had been burned to the ground
His daddy rebuilt the barn
While the ground was still warm

Lonsom had buried his copper still
Set it back up on same hill
The first batch after the war
Was his best he swore

The Raneys are a real hard bunch
Won’t be stopped, not by much
A war ain’t nearly enough
The Raneys are a hard bunch

Ransom Raney loved one wife
She gave his seven children life
He taught his two eldest sons
To do what their grandpa done

He lived long enough to see
A brand new century
He was satisfied
In 1905 he died

Ransom Raney stood alone
But he could be counted on
When you needed a friend
Against flatlanders or gov’mint men

Isaac “Ike” Raney (1848-1874)

Lonsom Raney (1828-1923) had two sons, Ransom (1847-1929) and Isaac “Ike” (1848-1874). Ransom, as the oldest, was heir to the copper pot his grandfather had brought from Scotland and the Raney whiskey recipe and Ike was called to preach. Ransom was hard, a mountain man who spent his time in the woods making whisky and hunting, trapping, and fishing, and a silent brooding hard man. Ike was his opposite and idealistic.

The next farm over was the McLemore place. Charles McLemore (1824-1904) had a daughter, Eleanor “Ella” McLemore (1848-1874), who was a sweet and beautiful young girl. Charles had often thought that of all the Raney boys, Ike was the best husband material for his daughter. For one thing, Ike was not involved in the Raney family moonshine business, and he was religious as well.

So Charlie McLemore made sure to find ways to get his daughter and Ike Raney together. And Ella and Ike Raney began to court, and eventually married in 1869.

They were happy for a while, Charlie built them a nice cabin, and a church for Ike to preach in. But Ella found herself fascinated by Ike’s brother Ransom, who was very different from her husband, who at times she tought of as weak.

Over time, this fascination matured into a romantic infatuation. Ransom Raney was a man, and could see that Ella was ripe for the picking, and without any thought of his brother proceeded to lure her into the sin of adultery.

Ike was simple, honest, but no fool. He could tell that someething wasn’t right at his home, between himself and his wife. Ella would spend more and more time “taking walks” and one day Ike followed her.

The rest is told in the song.

Lyin’ in Bed
(F.D. Leone, Jr.)

After this winter it’s nice to see some green
The season could be turning to spring
But there’s something I can’t shake from my head
It’s a feeling she been lying in bed

When I met her she had an innocent smile
In the ways of the world she was but a child
But she grew up fast and it all went to her head
Now I’m feeling she been lying in bed

Lying in bed
Lying in bed
My soul is filled with a cold dread
Can’t put my finger on it
Ain’t nothing she said
Just a feeling she been lying in bed

I saw her getting close to my brother Ransom
She always said she thought he was handsome
It wasn’t something that I misread
It’s a feeling she been lying in bed

I ain’t real sure what I will do
I sure don’t like being played for a fool
Then an idea came busting in my head
I told the Sheriff I left her lying in bed

Lying in bed
Lying in bed
My soul is filled with a cold dread
Can’t put my finger on it
Ain’t nothing she said
Just a feeling she been lying in bed

They’re gonna hang me a week from today
I won’t have any last words to say
But when we meet in hell and we’re both dead
I’ll tell her we’re here ’cause she was lying in bed

© 2022 Frank David Leone, Jr./Highway 80 Music (ASCAP). The songs and stories on the Highway 80 Stories website are works of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Wyatt Raney (1874-1934)

Wyatt Raney (1874-1934) was the son of Isaac “Ike” Raney (1848-1874) and Martha “Mattie” McLemore (1848-1874). He was orphaned when his father murdered his mother because of jealousy.

After being orphaned, Wyatt moved in with his uncle, Ransom Raney (1847-1929), and spent most of his time with his cousin, August Raney (1875-1898). They hunted in the Fannin County, Georgia hills, until they were old enough at which time they both enlisted and fought in the 1898 Mexican-American War. At the Battle of San Juan Hill both cousins were wounded, Wyatt losing a leg, but August dying from his wound.

Wyatt went home to Georgia and married his sweetheart, Belinda Barnes (1880-1902) and they had two children, Charles and Charlotte. When Charles was old enough he joined up to fight in World War I, but by that time Wyatt had seen the folly in war, and did not understand his son’s desire to run off and fight. Wyatt’s fears were fulfilled when Charles was killed, and buried along with other Raney dead.

After losing his wife during the birth of his daughter, Wyatt retreated from the world, until his death in 1934, using his last words and breath to curse God.

The Orphan Son
(F.D. Leone, Jr.)

My name is Wyatt Raney
I’m an orphan son
They hanged my Pa for killing Ma
When I was a child of one
Raised by my uncle Ransom
Some said he was really my Pa
That talk made Pa angry
Was why he shot my Ma
I’m an orphan son

Grew up with my cousin August
In the Fannin County hills
Up and down the hollers
We honed our hunting skills
Spring we went for turkey
Deer in the fall
Summers we’d help wi’ th’ whiskey
Th’ most fun of all

I’m an orphan son
Orphaned by a gun
I am but one
An orphan son

1898 me and August
Fought at San Juan Hill
I lost my left leg
But August he was killed
I limped back to Georgia
To Belinda I’d left behind
Our first son Charles was born
In 1899
I’m an orphan son

Charles was just like Ransom
He was his grandpa’s son
Spending weeks out hunting
Always with his gun
That stubborn Raney streak
Just like Ransom and Pa
Brothers, fathers, ‘n’ bad blood
Like a natural law

I’m an orphan son
Orphaned by a gun
I am but one
An orphan son

Charles joined up in ’17
What was he was fighting for
After Vicksburg and Gettysburg
Where’s the glory in war
He’s buried there on the hill
Another Raney sacrifice
My forebears fought for honor
And were proud to pay the price
I’m an orphan son

When I came into this world
Death defined my life
When my daughter Charlotte was born
I lost my wife
1934 and I’m tired
Ready to leave this world behind
If there’s a god in heaven
He’s deaf, dumb, and blind

I’m an orphan son
Orphaned by a gun
I am but one
An orphan son

Ransom and Ike: Abel and Cain

Ransom Raney (1847-1929) and Isaac “Ike” Raney (1848-1874) were the oldest sons of Lonsom Raney (1828-1923), the patriarch of the Raney family and moonshine dynasty. As Ike used to say, ‘me and Ransom are like Abel and Cain.’

Where Ransom loved to outdoors hunting and fishing, Ike was a farmer and was dedicated to raising a fine crop of corn and beans. But Ransom was somewhat of a bully and looked down on farming, seeing it as less manly than hunting. He would show this disrespect by harming Ike’s field by dragging one of his dead deers through the crop.

As this went on Ike knew he had to put some distance between himself and Ransom, so he built a little cabin and staked off a nice sized field on the river side of the Raney land, which covered a sizable acreage. After getting his farm going, and a couple of years, in 1869, Ike married Martha “Mattie” McLemore (1848-1874) a beautiful and innocently shy young woman.

Initially things went well, Mattie enjoyed life at the farm despite the seclusion and did not feel lonely. And when they had their forst two children, Charles (1871) and Charlotte (1873), even the solitude was improved. But eventually she began to want more.

Although she did love Ike, his personality was quiet, soft, and even passive. As a farmer he long ago accepted the vicissitudes of weather with an equanimity that she did not quite understand. It was almost like he accepted failure too easily. Ransom on the other hand was strong, and in control of the forces in his life. She found his roughness very attractive. Soon she was fantasizing about a closer relationship with her brother-in-law.

Mattie’s desire did not go unnoticed by Ransom, who saw how easily he could destroy Ike simply by letting nature take its course.

Over those first four years, Mattie and Ike grew further and further apart. Mattie continued to do her chores, cooking, cleaning, and bearing children. She always had a meal waiting for Ike when he came in from the field, but often would not sit at the table with him, excusing herself with the excuse she wanted to walk around the property. Ike knew she had come from a large family and no doubt missed the companionship of her siblings. He indulged her in these walks, but when they began to happen more frequently he became suspicious.

One day he decided to follow her to satisfy his curiosity about where she went. To his horror, he followed her to the river where Ransom had set up one of his deer blinds. Ike, hiding some brush, watched as they embraced, and then entered the small shack. Ike was devastated and trudged home despondent not knowing how to respond.

He wanted to give it time in order to see if Mattie would come to her senses, or if Ransom would grow tired of her. Ransom was not known to sustain long involvements with women. Usually he sought the company of prostitutes, those who could make no claim on him. And maybe he thought that as a married woman, neither would Mattie.

However, they continued to see each other, even as Mattie was pregnant with Ike’s third child.

This was too much for Ike. He waited until after she gave birth, and wanted to give her one last chance to come back to him, completely, before he did or said something he could not take back. However, she went back to Ransom and Ike made his decision.

My Brother Ransom
(F.D. Leone, Jr.)

My brother Ransom was older than me
He’d inherit Grandpa’s recipe
We both helped Pap make our shine
Ransom was ten, I was nine
Handed down, father to son
Our copper pot came all the way from Scotland
Family is everything to us
Blood is only thing you can trust
Ransom liked to hunt and fish
Chewed ginseng like licorice
He was rough and pretty wild
My brother Ransom was a mountain child

Each year I’d plow a patch of land
Squash and beans the work of my hands
Ransom might come back with a buck he’d killed
Drag that carcass through my plowed field
Ransom looked at my farmin’ with disdain
He and I were Abel and Cain
If I stayed I knew we’d come to fight
I had to move and did one night
For a few years I did fine
Worked the land and made it mine
I married Mattie and brought her home
But Ransom wouldn’t leave her alone

Mattie was a sweet, innocent child
Melt your heart with her mysterious smile
I was never sure what she saw in me
I guess for her I was security
But Ransom was always there
Like a shadow everywhere
Her softness was drawn to his strength
Her eyes followed wherever he went
Mattie changed bit by bit
She became remote and distant
I gave her time hoping it would pass
I didn’t know how or what to ask

Side by side in bed we lay like logs
I couldn’t name it but something was wrong
She told me it was all in my head
But I didn’t believe a word she said
It got so we would hardly talk
She spent time taking long walks
One day I thought I’d spy out where she went
And discover her devilment
There’s a river that borders my land
Where Ransom built a deer stand
Could that really be her destination
Why that place in all of creation?

The answer was soon to be known
Ransom drank her in like she was all his own
She ran and leapt into his arms
And offered him every one of her charms
I stood there rooted like a tree
Afraid of what I might see
I watched her walk into his shack
And with a bitter heart I turned back
Best place for thinking is behind a plow
I sure had things to think about now
How would I act, what could I ask?
Too late to stop her from slippin’ from my grasp

She came home to the same routine
Living the lie as if I’d never seen
What I saw was seared on my brain
When I close my eyes the images remain
Ransom needed me for a whiskey run
I wouldn’t let on I knew what they’d done
Knowing Ransom he’d not feel any guilt
He wasn’t one to cry over spilt milk
Back home I got my rat gun
I shot Mattie, that’s what I done
Sent for the sheriff and waited there
Never denied what I did to her

I was hanged in 1874
I killed my wife for acting a whore
Not Ransom; it was her I shot
Ransom was blood, and she was not

.© 2022 Frank David Leone, Jr./Highway 80 Music (ASCAP). The songs and stories on the Highway 80 Stories website are works of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Royal Raney (1868-1939)

Royal Raney was the grandson of Lonsom Raney, legendary moonshiner and general hell-raiser of the North Georgia mountains. Here, Lonsom is with a young Royal, spending some time on the family farm telling some history of their clan and in general initiating him into the Raney fold.

Say Roy
(F.D. Leone, Jr.)

Say Roy, get my walking stick
I want to take a look around the place
Get up boy, and you best be quick
I’m old ‘n’ ain’ got time to waste
Come on Roy, find your sense
I want to see that stretch o’ fence
Did you mend it right?
Let’s go, it’s almost light

Get up and make your bed
Boy don’ keep me waitin’ long
Ain’ you heard a single word I sed?
I want to sweep off your Grandma’s headstone
It looks like it might storm
Gonna stick my head in the barn
Did you milk the cow?
I wanna go and go now

I can see it just like yesterday
Walkin’ with my pap just like this
I was just about your age
And wanted a walkin’ stick just like his
Pap cut a branch, gave it to me
He cut it from a hickory tree
Said, “when that dries it’ll be good”
We’re standing where that hickory stood

Say Roy, let’s head back home
I done looked around the place
Come on boy, get a move on
I’m old ‘n’ ain’ got time to waste
Light the lamp, trim the wick
Here, take this walkin’ stick
It’ll be yours from now on
Come on Roy, let’s go home

The Raney Still

Lonsom Raney (1828-1923) learned how to mnake whiskey from his father Andrew Rainey (1799-1852), who inturn had learned from his father Macgregor “Mac” Raney (1765-1810). Family lore holds that they all used the same copper still that had been built by some even earlier Raney patriarch. Supposedly, this very copper pot had come to America with Maclen Rainey (1713-1765) in 1741 when he was 28 years of age. At leeast that was the story Lonsom had always swore to.

But there’s a bit more to this story, since Maclen and that copper pot were separated at sea when their ship was lost in a storm. Maclen hung on to a steamer trunk for three days until he and the trunk found land, as Lonsom told the story, it was Haiti, but who really knows. Lonsom never let the true facts hobble a good story.

Because whiskey making was deep in the Raney blood, Maclen made sure to find a replacement for the lost ancestral still before he acquired passage on a freighter bound for Virginia. Which he did.

Now Vernon heard the truth from his grandfather Royal Raney (1868-1939) whlle they were in the woods cooking up another batch of their monshine one crisp cool October morning.

But by now the replacement still was 179 years old itself, and had made hundreds of barrels of clear corn whiskey, and might as well have been the one from Scotland. For all Vernon knew, that one probably ended up floating to the same shore his 7th great-grandfather had, and some islander was making whiskey in it to this day, and spinning some colorful yarn about how he came to own it.

Copper Pot Still
(F.D. Leone, Jr.)

The rosy dawn crawls above the tree line
As Vernon slowly comes awake
Vernon! Get a move on;
Tend to the fire, for heaven sake.
Their second week at the still site,
Took em some days to find the spot.
Hidden near clean cold water,
But now the still was finally up.

Fast minutes of hard work,
Then slow hours of doing nothing;
Listenin’ to the birdsong and the wind,
Layin’ under live oak trees; napping.
Samplin’ the brew from time to time,
Tossin’ the heads and tails.
That still’s pretty old, ain’t it, grampa?
Royal took a deep breath and then exhaled.

That still; now there’s a story;
Vernon, I’m gonna tell you the truth,
But don’t you go an’ tell nobody,
Cept th’ son you deed the recipe to.
One of your ancient ancestors,
Brought that still here in 1741;
I was told it came all th’ way from Scotland,
But that ain’t exactly where it come from.

Black pools of water stood by the still;
A steady rain pierced the soft moonlight.
Damn this rain, Royal hissed,
I’m too old for this whiskey life.
Some check the proof with a gadget,
But I always just shook the jar;
When the beads are big an’ pop an’ dance on the surface;
A trained eye will git it right on the mark.

A copper pot was all Maclen Rainey took
Aboard a tall ship bound for this land.
Overnight a typhoon blew up;
Ship and still were never seen again.
Mac held onto a steamer trunk for three days,
Until ashore he and it were tossed.
The first thing he did was find a tradesman,
Who could fabricate another still for the one he lost.

My grandpa, Lonsom, swore it was Haiti;
A Freanchman livin’ at the ship yard,
Who turned the copper sheets for this still;
Each Raney son would leave his mark.
The only thing to consider is,
A Rainey got here with a copper pot;
And began runnin’ untaxed whiskey,
Nine generations on, we still ain’t stopped.

So, pap, is it all a lie?
Vern, what’s true? What’s real?
The importance of family lore,
Aint if it’s fact, but how it makes us feel.
What endows a thing with meaning,
Is a history that’s been transformed;
If this pot is in fact not the first one,
It’s history, too, was lost in a storm.

Near dawn they heard dogs below;
Down the mountain distant dogbark.
Then fadin’ off when they coursed out,
Along some rocky draw in the dark.
Later they brought the truck around to the still site,
Loaded jars and pot into the bed;
Vernon was silent as they worked,
Thinkin’ bout all Royal Raney’d said.

Belinda Barnes and Wyatt Raney

Belinda Barnes (1880-1902) grew up in the north Georgia hills and loved the outdoors. She was something of a tomboy, and was considered a ittle strange by her community. Because she felt ostrasized she ended up spending most of the days alone, wlaking the hills, doign a little hunting and fishing, and generally living as most boys her age did.

An unfortuante event occurred in which she was molested by her uncle which only served to cause her to retreat further inward. But since by now her sexuality had been awakened, albeit in a negative fashion, she still began seeking out expereinces with other men

This continued for a few years until she met a young man from a neighboring family, Wyatt Raney (1874-1934).

After being orphaned, Wyatt was taken in by his uncle, Ransom Raney (1847-1929), and spent most of his time with his cousin, August Raney (1875-1898). They hunted in the Fannin County, Georgia hills, until they were old enough at which time they both enlisted and fought in the 1898 Mexican-American War. At the Battle of San Juan Hill both cousins were wounded, Wyatt losing a leg, but August dying from his wound.

Wyatt went home to Georgia and married his sweetheart, Belinda and they had two children, Charles and Charlotte. After losing Belinda during the birth of his daughter, Wyatt retreated from the world, until his death in 1934.

Winter Turns to Spring
(F.D. Leone, Jr.)

Belinda Barnes wasn’t like other girls;
Folks called her a tomboy,
Said she looked like a farm boy.
Wore a hunting cap, boots and overalls;
Could get the best of any boy her size.
There was a sadness behind her eyes.
She kept hidden a soft tender side,
She yearned to be touched;
Just not in her uncle’s truck.

Winter turns to spring
Barren trees will be green
Midnight will see the dawn
We press on

A cold hard look kept most folks at bay;
But she would lay with any man, anywhere;
People talked; but Belinda didn’t seem to care.
Then she met a boy who could really see her,
He saw her demons and tamed ’em quiet.
Belinda let her guard down with Wyatt.
The Raneys were rough mountain bootleg people;
Wyatt worried about Belinda.
Would they accept her; befriend her.

Winter turns to spring
Barren trees will be green
Midnight will see the dawn
We press on

They had two kids, Charles and Charlotte
But Belinda? Wyatt lost her,
Giving birth to his daughter.
1918 Charles went to war;
Wyatt did his best to dissuade him,
But Charlie would not obey him.
Wyatt closed his eyes, went home and raised his daughter.
Instead of honor, Charlie found death;
Wyatt cursed God with his last breath.

Winter turns to spring
Barren trees will be green
Midnight will see the dawn
We press on

Wyatt Raney, Epilogue

Wyatt Raney (1874-1934) was the son of Isaac “Ike” Raney (1848-1874) and Martha “Mattie” McLemore (1848-1874). He was orphaned when his father murdered his mother because of jealousy.

After losing his wife during the birth of his daughter, Wyatt retreated from the world, until his death in 1934, using his last words and breath to curse God.

The North Georgia Hills
(F.D. Leone, Jr.)

He ain’t Joe Hill;
He ain’t John Henry.
Just a hillbilly,
With a long mem’ry.
He don’t carry a grudge,
Ain’t about getting even.
When his mind is made up,
You better believe him.

He’s Scots-Irish,
A code from the old hills.
Tobacco and ginseng root;
Runnin’ whiskey stills.
His grampaw taught him the life;
Lonsom said, “you, grandson,
If they bring a knife;
You bring a gun.”

The north Georgia hills;
Brown November fields.
His people came from Scotland,
Across the Appalachian mountains,
To the north Georgia hills;
The north Georgia hills.

The law hung his father,
For killin’ his mother.
Orphaned by violence;
Hi anger smolders.
His people are bootleggers,
Living outside the law.
He barely knows his letters;
Don’t slow him down at all.

The north Georgia hills;
Brown November fields.
His people came from Scotland,
Across the Appalachian mountains,
To the north Georgia hills;
The north Georgia hills.

The Story of Lucy Cooper, Levi Hooper and Louanne Bowden

Mildred’s House of Values
^{(F.D. Leone, Jr.)}

Mildred Motts Hooper was born in Tallulah, Louisiana in 1944, the half sister of Molly Motts Raney. Mildred married Leon Hooper and had one son, Levi Hooper, and passed away in 2014 at the age of 69 just before her 70th birthday.

Mildred liked to cook and crochet and was happy as a homemaker. One of her favorite dishes to prepare was baked cheese grits which she would serve with breaded pork chops and homemade rolls.

She and Leon were married in 1963 shortly before Leon was shipped off to Vietnam. When Leon returned from his tour of service they settled down in Jackson, Mississippi where Leon worked as a welder and they raised their only son, Levi, who was born in 1973.

However, Leon only lived another two years, dying in 1975, and Levi had no memories of his father. To help make ends meet Mildred began to sell items from her home, establishing a thrift store at her residence (see song, “Mildred’s House of Values“).

Mildred passed away in 2014 after suffering a stroke.

Mildred’s “House of Values,” on a corner lot
A price tag hung from every table and chair
Things for sale like any other shop
But it was Mildred’s home and she still lived there

Her son Levi would come by and do odd jobs
Help his momma with what she needed done
Rustin’ on blocks, a ’68 Dodge
Levi never could get to run

A person does all they can do
Full time job just gettin’ through
Rise in the morning, close your eyes at night
In between, try to get it right

Mildred was widowed nineteen-seventy-five
Leon Hooper was a good man
Price tags went up, year after he died
Life don’ turn out nothin’ like we plan

The ’68 Dodge, last car Leon bought
Rest of his stuff, sittin’ in a shed
You can see in Levi, Leon’s walk
Are the ones we love ever really dead?

A person does all they can do …

Mildred’s “House of Values,” on a corner lot
From every stick of furniture a price tag hung
A ‘68 Dodge rustin’ on blocks
Levi never could get to run

_{© 2017 Frank David Leone, Jr./Highway 80 Music (ASCAP). The songs and stories on the Highway 80 Stories website are works of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.}

Levi and Lucy
^{(F.D. Leone, Jr.)}

The romance of Levi Hooper and Lucy Cooper was an unlikely union; absolutely, an attraction of opposites.

They met while living across the street from one another in Jackson, Mississippi. Lucy was a hell-raising rebel and Levi was a church-going, salt-of-the-earth young man. Lucy was attracted to Levi mainly because he was nothing like the people she’d been involved with up to then, and Lucy had grown tired of her life and was ripe for a change.

Levi was attracted to Lucy because, well, for one thing, she was a very sexy lady, but more importantly he intuitively felt that she wanted more out of life than her drinking, drugging and wild partying.

Theirs was a true love which they both felt strongly, but a love that was destined to be cut off far too early, its potential left unfulfilled.

Lucy Cooper cussed the hammer that struck her thumb
Sent it sailing to kingdom come
Grabbed a whiskey bottle and marched out to her front porch
Found a roach and lit it with a butane torch

Levi Hooper watched from across the street
Wonderin’ how they might come to meet
He strolled out real slow looked in his mailbox
Lucy called out,”hey, hotshot”

Love can’t be controlled
Can’t be foretold
If you can explain it
It ain’ it

Love can’t be fenced
Or convinced
If you can explain it
It ain’ it

Every Sunday Levi would stop by on his way to church
Look at his feet with each of Lucy’s cuss words
Levi hoped she might want to come with him sometime
But he tried to push that thought out of his mind

Lucy had no luck at tryin’ to settle down
Her old friends always kept coming around
Lucy got busted they sent her to the prison farm
Where she put that stuff all up her arm

Love can’t be controlled
Can’t be foretold
If you can explain it
It ain’ it

Love can’t be fenced
Or convinced
If you can explain it
It ain’ it

Louanne in Vicksburg
(F. D. Leone, Jr.)

Louanne Murphy Bowden (1967- ) comes from an old Texas family, descendants of Thomas Bowden (1802-1836), one of The Old Three Hundred and the first Bowden to live in Texas. The Bowdens became quite wealthy during the first decade of the 20th century when Louanne’s great-great-grandfather, Jonus Caldwell Bowden (1860-1914), struck oil on his ranch, before dying of a stroke. The ranch and oil wells went to his son, James Neal Bowden (1889-1961), who proved himself more than a competent steward of the family’s burgeoning wealth.

By the time Louanne was born the family had been living for decades in Dallas, the “old-money” part of town, Highland Park. As was true for many kids who grew up during the Seventies, of privilege, Louanne’s idea of rebellion centered upon hanging out with kids from “the wrong side of the tracks”, and in general, frustrating her parents’ ideas about whom she ought to date, i.e. a nice boy from the club. When it came time for Louanne to go off to college, she chose the University of Mississippi in Oxford because she had heard from some friends in Baton Rouge that it was an even bigger party school than LSU (see song, “Louanne in Vicksburg“).

In her first semester at Ol’ Miss, Louanne met a good-looking fellow, Ronnie Raney, who definitely was not a boy from the club, and not even enrolled at the university. His main preoccupation appeared to be selling quality weed to fraternity boys. One thing led to another and soon Louanne and Ronnie began dating, ending up with Louanne unofficially dropping out of school and moving to Vicksburg with him.

Louanne did not fully appreciate what she was getting into, since unbeknownst to her, Ronnie’s little pot business was only the tip of the criminal iceberg run by Ronnie’s mother, Molly Raney. The Raney family led by Molly had a strong hold on the political and judicial levers of power in Warren County, and in fact, exerted influence and received protection from prosecution from Natchez to Memphis.

For a while Louanne partnered with Ronnie in the marijuana distribution enterprise, but her main occupation was managing the bar owned by the Raney family. However, after few years, even getting married to Ronnie, she got tired of Ronnie’s habit of becoming violent when he’d had too much to drink, which was often. She finally found the nerve to shoot him while he sat at their dinner table eating a slice of chess pie with a beer (see song, “One Time Too Many“).

She did not even attempt to flee the jurisdiction nor avoid prosecution for this crime. She was well aware that Ronnie’s older brother, Lonnie, sheriff of the county, would make sure that her justifiable homicide defense at trial would not convince the jury. In short order Louanne was found guilty of second degree murder and sentenced to twenty years to be served at the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility.

While at CMCF, Louanne developed an exemplary record of good behavior including mentoring several other young female prisoners. For example, about half way through her sentence, a young woman, Lucy Cooper, was sent to CMCF on a drug charge, given eighteen months. Lucy was a funny, bright, and street smart but fragile woman who simply could not do the time for her crime. Despite being taken under Louanne’s wing, Lucy became increasingly more and more despondent, eventually suiciding from an overdose – within weeks of her release (see song, “When Louanne Met Lucy in Prison“).

Not long after this tragedy Louanne’s case was reviewed by a judge who ruled that hers was a case of justified homicide and her sentence was commuted to time served. These events coincided with the death of her grandmother in 2015, when she was released after serving about 60% of her original sentence. She returned to Texas for her grandmother’s funeral and remained there with her mother, to live once again in Highland Park, however, now in somewhat reduced grandeur (see song, “A Waxahachie Funeral“).

Louanne came from Dallas money
A mansion in Highland Park
Brought julips to her daddy on the veranda
While fireflies flickered in the dark
A summer of magnolia ‘n’ mimosa
Sweet perfume on the heavy August air
Louanne left for college, Oxford Mi’sippy
Ronnie Raney was what she’d find there

When you don’t hear what momma says
And don’t think daddy knows best
If nothin’ is all they’re owed
You’re headed down your own road
You’re headed down your own road

Ronnie Raney was the perfect antidote
For Louanne’s Highland Park innocence
They traded Ol’ Miss for a shotgun house in Vicksburg
With no thought to consequence
Molly Raney was Ronnie’s mother
His brother Lonnie was shurf
The Raneys sold drugs from Natchez to Memphis
You get in their way, you got hurt

When you don’t hear what momma says …

November and an iron sky
Fields of skeleton cotton and corn
Louanne was tryin’ to drive back to Dallas
To the one she was when she was born
At a Pak-a-Sak this side of Waskom
Standing at the Texas line
Drizzlin’ rain fallin’ steady since she left Monroe
She ain’t ready to leave Vicksburg behind
She ain’t ready to leave Vicksburg behind

Ready For Change
(F. D. Leone, Jr.)

Lucy Cooper and Levi Hooper met in Jackson, Mississippi when they lived across the street from each other (see song “Levi and Lucy”). They became involved in a relationship, something of an attraction of opposites: Levi was a church-going, salt of the earth type, whereas Lucy was a hell-raising rebel, who was no stranger to a variety of mind-altering substances.

However, Lucy had begun to feel that she had reached a dead end with her life, and was looking, most likely subconsciously, for new direction, one which seemed to be provided by Levi.

Unfortunately, Levi came along too late for Lucy, who was overtaken by the momentum and trajectory of her past life. One of her marijuana customers offered her name as his dealer, in exchange for a suspended sentence for simple possession. Lucy was arrested and convicted for distribution and sent to prison, where after a year into her 18 month sentence, she succumbed to depression and committed suicide (see song, “When Louanne Met Lucy in Prison”).

Levi was left to pick up the pieces as best he could in the wake of this aborted relationship (see song, “Levi After Lucy”).

When Lucy and Levi met
Lucy wasn’t ready yet
To turn over a new leaf
But she really wanted to
To do what she had to do
Her life had mostly brought her grief

The mirror Lucy looked in
Showed her where she had been
But not where she wanted to go to
Levi was steady, Levi was strong
Someone Lucy could rely upon
Change ain’t what you want but what you do

Lucy wasn’t sure how to start
But something was cooking in her heart
Pushing her past the life she had known
Levi was the catalyst
Even so it was hit or miss
All he could do was cheer Lucy on

It’ll take some time
For Lucy to leave behind
The people and things that were holding her back
But with Live by her side
Lucy thought she could get by
But things didn’t turn out like that

One Time Too Many
(F. D. Leone, Jr.)

In a disastrous act of rebellion from her upper crust background, Louanne Bowden began dating and ultimately married Ronnie Raney whom sehe met while attending the University of Mississippi in Oxford (see song, “Louanne in Vicksburg“).

The Raney family under the leadership of matriarch Molly Motts Raney transitioned from bootlegging moonshine whiskey to distributing marijuana, pills and eventually funding methamphetamine labs. Ronnie was the second oldest son, acting as his mother’s right hand operations manager, his older brother Lonnie was sheriff of Warren County, offering protection for the entire enterprise.

After suffering years of Ronnie drunken abuse, Louanne and finding no relief from the corrupt legal system in Warren County, took matters into her own hands and shot Ronnie with a deer rifle as he sat at the kitchen table eating a slice of her homemade peach pie.

Although she knew she was justified in killing him, she fatalistically accepted her conviction of murder and the twenty year sentence that went with it. Only much later was she vindicated and released for time served (see song, “A Waxahachie Funeral“).

She’d like to fix up her dinette
Yellow wallpaper with nosegays
A hard wood floor would do the trick
Those stains’ll take more than paint

A buzzer spoils this daydream
Lights out and the bars clang shut
It’ll have to wait twenty years
This cell is where she’ll stay put

She’d had enough
Taken too much
He treated her rough one time too many
She did the crime
She’ll do the time
Regrets? No, she don’t have any

She brought him his beer and a slice of pie
Then shot him with his deer gun
It was worth it just to see him surprised
Once he realized just what she’d done

She’d had enough …

His brother was sheriff of Warren County
There was no doubt the fix was in
A jury of his peers showed no mercy
But if she could she’d do it again

She’d had enough …

When Louanne Met Lucy in Prison
(F. D. Leone, Jr.)

Louanne Bowden was sent to the Mississippi Penitentiary for Women after being convicted of murdering her husband, Ronnie Raney (see song, “One Time Too Many“). Prison was an unlikely place for someone of Louanne’s background to end up, but there she was (see song, “Louanne in Vicksburg“). The fact that she killed Ronnie as a result of his constant physical abuse did not mitigate the verdict. Only years later would her case be reviewed and she would be released for time served when the charge was changed from murder to justifiable homicide (see song “A Waxahachie Funeral“).

However, while Louanne was serving her twenty year sentence Lucy Cooper was also sent to this prison on an 18 month sentence for distribution of controlled substance, marijuana. Although Lucy put up a brash and strong front, she was in fact a fragile woman, unable to cope with life behind bars. Shortly before being considered and most likely to be released on parole, a little shy of 12 months into her sentence, Lucy succumbed to depression and killed herself with an heroin overdose (see also song, “Levi and Lucy“).

When Louanne met Lucy in prison
Lou was halfway through her twenty
For killin’ Ronnie Raney
Who hit her once too many
Lucy would talk all about Levi
In words tender and soft
It was old friends and old sins
Got Lucy caught

Ain’t that how it is sometimes?
Ain’t that how it is sometimes?
You’re on the verge of change
Life sends you the same ol’ same

They gave Lucy eighteen months
Easy time for most but for Lucy hard
Day by day she faded away
Behind stone walls and steel bars
Louanne tried to keep an eye on Lucy
Easy in there to come to harm
August night when they found her
Needle was still in Lucy’s arm

Ain’t that how it is sometimes …

Louanne got word to Levi
Said it best she knew how
Lucy only had six weeks left
She ain’ never gettin’ out
Levi read that letter and then
Put it in his dresser drawer
Got drunk in Vicksburg went a little further
Did a little more

Levi After Lucy
(F. D. Leone, Jr.)

In the aftermath of Lucy Cooper‘s either accidental overdose or intentional suicide while incarcerated in the Louisiana Prison for Women, Levi Hooper went on something of a bender. Levi was not normally a drinker, but he felt despondent over Lucy’s death and did the only thing he knew how in order to deal with the set of emotions he felt: anger, shock, frustration.

Lucy had not done any drugs or much drinking for weeks prior to being arrested. That arrest was in itself was another case of bad timing: someone she thought was a friend flipped when arrested and gave Lucy up as his dealer (see song, “Levi and Lucy“. The reason Levi did not wish to believe that Lucy had committed suicide was because often when a former user has not done any narcotics for a while, if they relapse at their last dosage, their body cannot tolerate what it once did.

In any event, Lucy had been in the process of turning her life around at the time of her arrest, and her death while serving a relatively short sentence, 18 months, was hard for Levi to take (see songs, “Ready for Change” and “When Louanne Met Lucy in Prison“).

His binge begins in bars around Vicksburg, then he hits the road, to Greenwood, and Greenville, ending up at a small Catholic church in Lake Providence, Louisiana. Levi does not wish to be rude to the priest, he is simply exhausted both mentally and physically, and after this experience, Levi goes back home, devotes himself once again to helping his mother and begin to pick up the pieces of his life.

Levi staggered up the stone church steps
A slice of moon hung above a wooden cross
Inside the door he stared at a concrete font
Then walked down the aisle, drunk and lost

He eased himself into a pew and sat
Musty scent of incense hung in the air
Worn leather knee-benches underfoot
Levi tried to find the words of a prayer

Vicksburg, Greenwood, Greenville
Gone down many roads, travelin’ still
Pavement, gravel, then dirt
But what he’s lookin’ for ain’t in this church

His head sank to his chest; he slept
A priest shook him; he struggled to his feet
The priest asked him, “Do I know ye?”
“No,” Levi said. “You don’ know me.”

Vicksburg, Greenwood, Greenville …

“Please, Lord, please keep me still
From sinkin’ lower an’ blowin’ away
I’ll straighten out I swear I will
Least that’s how I feel today”

Priest looked him over and said
“Were you waiting to see me?”
Woman was dustin’ the altar with a rag
“No, sir, I just fell asleep.”

Vicksburg, Greenwood, Greenville …

© 2018 Frank David Leone, Jr./Highway 80 Music (ASCAP). The songs and stories on the Highway 80 Stories website are works of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Down 80 East
(F. D. Leone, Jr.)

Upon hearing of Lucy Cooper‘s death while in prison, Levi Hooper went on a bender. Getting in his truck and driving through Mississippi: Greenwood, Greenville, Vicksburg and even into Louisiana. He drank until drunk in small bars along the way (see songs, “When Louanne Met Lucy in Prison” and “Levi After Lucy“).

This behavior was certainly unusual for Levi, normally a down-to-earth, church-going man who spent much of his spare time helping his mother, Mildred Motts Hooper, with her house and business. She had turned her home into a thrift shop a year after her husband passed on (see song, “Mildred’s House of Values“).

This drinking road trip only lasted a little over a week, but it was enough for Levi’s mother, to become concerned. So it was with relief that he finally came home, and things returned to normal without Levi offering up any explanation as to the reason for his absence.

Levi woke up on the wrong side of the road
Sitting on the side of 80 East
Last thing he remembered was stumbling out that old church
Pressing a wrinkled twenty on the priest

Time to go back, runnin’ wild has run its course
He can’t run away from the grief
He needs a shave, a strong cup of coffee
Time to go back, down 80 East

He don’t understand why Lucy did what she did
She was so close to getting her parole
But this drinking and running has gone on long enough
What he’s looking for ain’t down this road

Time to go back, runnin’ wild has run its course
He can’t run away from the grief
He needs a shave, a strong cup of coffee
Time to go back, down 80 East

All along Levi thought it too good to be true
Doubted he and Lucy would last
But it looked like she was headed in the right direction
In the end she just ran out of gas

Time to go back, runnin’ wild has run its course
He can’t run away from the grief
He needs a shave, a strong cup of coffee
Time to go back, down 80 East

Lucy’s Grandma On Her Mama’s Side
(F. D. Leone, Jr.)

The May 24, 1935, Roanoke Times headline read: Woman Pilot of Whiskey Cars Is Placed On Stand. Millie Carson Sparks testified on May 23 for a half hour. “So great was the interest with which her appearance has been awaited that it served to overshadow a full day of varied testimony . . .” The experience was a disappointing one for most, including Anderson, who saw his hopes of a great mountain heroine die with her appearance on the witness stand. “Mrs. Carson, whose name became so widely known here in the palmy [sic] days of the bootleggers during Prohibition, appeared minus the diamond that once gleamed in her teeth. She was dressed in a white outfit with hat and shoes to match, the dress having brown ruffled sleeves and collar gathered in front with a large cameo pin.

Mildred “Millie” Sparks was a tall, thin and sophisticated young woman whose appearance and mien belied her Southwestern Virginia upbringing. Sparks had originally married a big-shot bootlegger and soon became the principal driver for the operation, driving pilot cars as the caravans of booze careened and smashed their way through the hills of rural towns and into the conduits of the major cities, becoming a celebrity in the process. They said Sparks had movie-star looks and diamonds set in her teeth.

The woman she presented to the world gave no indication of the kind of upbringing she experienced as a girl.

She would have been out of bed at dawn. Summers came on the mountain farm then winters. From the time she was six or seven, she went, for a few months each winter, to a mountain school.

From the time when she was tall enough to stand up to the stove she got up and got the breakfast. In the winter there were corn bread and hot hog meat, and in the summer there were greens. Then she had to clean up the dishes and sweep out the house. She said that the house had no floor. There was just the hard earth, clay she said, made hard and even shiny by much tramping of bare and unwashed feet. To sweep out the house with a homemade broom her father had made, to wash the dishes – mend and wash her father’s clothes.

To school for a few months each winter, for four or five years – to learn anyway to read and write. Spring, summer, fall, and winter. There were plenty of creeping crawling things. “We had lice and bedbugs,” she said. She thought, when she was a child, they were companions every one had.

When she was sixteen she decided she could take no more of the life of back-breaking work and ran off to Raleigh and found work in one of the textile mills. Eventually she met the men involved in the bootlegging and married one.

No one around called the thing “bootlegging.” That might as well have been a foreign word. “You mean blockadin’, sir? What blockades?” Nobody ever said “moonshine” either. White Lightning. White Mule. Moon. Stump Whiskey. Mountain Dew. Squirrel Whiskey. Fire Water.

She had a little girl, Bessie, and chose to retire from her husband’s business, which was becoming increasingly dangerous and unprofitable by the early ’30s. It wasn’t long before the Feds shut down the entire enterprise, culminating with the longest trial in state history. She died 50 years after giving testimony in that trial at the age of 86.

Lucy’s grandma on her momma’s side
Was still around when Lucy died
Bessie Grant was born in the Depression
Had a hard life but was full of fun
Lucy was her favorite one
They never told her Lucy died in prison

Bessie’s momma was a blockader
Revenuers could never fade her
When she drove her fast pilot car
Millie Sparks had a diamond in her teeth
Ever’ thing she did was for keeps
Wore a camel coat; smoked a cigar

A long line of strong women
Tough as nails every one
They were here before this land was named
None of ’em was ever tamed
There ain’ ’nuff time to tell what all they done

Lucy’s momma Mae had a juke joint
Over by Friar’s Point
Where the all the old blues men played
Lucy’s daddy Frank burned it down
Bragged he was tired of her runnin’ around
‘Til he met the business end of a .38

A long line of strong women …

Maybe you heard about Lucy’s end
But six months after she went in
She had a baby, a little boy
They took the child and sent him off
Did it all without a second thought
Momma Mae found him, raised him up as McCoy

A long line of strong women …

A Waxahachie Funeral
(F. D. Leone, Jr.)

A call from that charity lawyer
Words like “justifiable homicide”
She heard him say the phrase “time served”
Then a thirty hour Greyhound ride

Twelve years in Louanne walked out of prison
In a blue dress and a brand new pair of shoes
Destination: a Waxahachie funeral
Her grandma dead at a hunderd ‘n’ two

Standin’ with her people among weathered stones
Stiff new shoes powdered with red dirt
Back home to witness a tough ol’ Texas woman
Laid into a plot of Texas earth

Her daddy died five years before
That was a funeral Louanne had to miss
It’s just her and her Neiman Marcus mother
Left behind to make some sense of this

They climb inside a shiny black Lincoln
Go back to that big old empty house
Their polite Highland Park friends
Don’t know how to talk to her now

Standin’ with her people among weathered stones …

Louanne and momma sit in the kitchen
Mute and surrounded by their ghosts
They stare across a walnut table
A cup of coffee and a slice of melba toast

Louanne remembers another August
That magic summer of eighteen
When her life seemed so full of promise
Magnolias and September dreams

Standin’ with her people among weathered stones …

Love and Loss During the Gold Rush

The Ballad of Black Jack Kelley and Spooner Magee

Location: North Central Louisiana
Period: 1849
Dramatis personae: “Black Jack” Kelley; Spooner Magee; the Stranger.

Jack Kelley (1824-1886) married into the Magee family, marrying Margaret Magee (1824-1896) in 1841. Jack and her brother, Spooner Magee (1826-1902), became best friends and would often go hunting together as well as drinking and getting into a variety of mishaps and adventures.

On the night this song describes, Jack and Spooner were at a local watering hole when Jack offers Spooner the idea of going out to California, this was 1849 when the gold rush was the rage. However, Jack proposed that they not try their luck at gold prospecting, instead to open a general mercantile storefront and sell necessaries to those with a greedier nature. Jack thought it more reliably lucrative, as he says, “fleecing the suckers.”

But while this discussion was taking place, of which Spooner remained unconvinced of the venture, a stranger interrupted them and the night took a somewhat violent and unfortunate detour.

Jack and Spoon never did make it out to California. In fact, the idea was never broached again.

A Day In The Life of Spooner Magee

Location: Northwestern Louisiana, between Monroe and Shreveport.
Period: 1879
Dramatis personae: Spooner Magee (1826-1886); Sally Ann Gray (1863-1954); Jack Kelley (1824-1869).

It’s been ten years since Jack Kelley, Spooner’s brother-in-law and best friend, died. They had shared many adventures and good times, and Spooner missed him sorely. Jack had married Spooner’s sister Margaret, and entered the Magee family as a second son. He and Spooner quickly became great running buddies. But Jack’s nature was more searching, seeking new experiences and driven by an urge to break out of the confines of rural Northwestern Louisiana. As Spooner said, “Oh, he was a rascal for sure.”

This adventurous urge is best typified by Jack’s brainstorm during the Gold Rush for he and Spooner to go out to California and set up a store to sell necessaries to the miners. A plan which was thwarted by an encounter with a sheriff’s deputy in a bar. But, Jack had planted the idea into Spooner’s brain to go out west, and Spooner never really gave up on that dream.

This song describes Spooner, late in life, reminiscing about old times with his best friend, Black Jack Kelley, and still dreaming of California.

The song takes place over the course of one day in 1879 with Spooner in the bar, the Faded Rose, talking to the bartender, Sally Ann Gray. Spooner is trying to convince her to make this far-fetched trip to California until, finally, she decides to do it.

At the end, they made it to the Pacific Ocean.

Sally Ann

Location: San Francisco, California, Monroe, Louisiana
Period: 1886-1954
Dramatis personae: Sam “Spooner” Magee (1826-1886); Sally Ann Gray (1863-1954); Sam “Teaspoon” Magee (1862-1946); Henry Olson Magee (1853-1932).

You wouldn’t know it from her name, but Sally Ann Gray was full-bloodied Sicilian. Her father’s family had anglicized their Italian name of Graziano to Gray upon first emigrating to England in the 17th century, which was quite common. Her mother and father entered America at the port of New Orleans in 1859 shortly after they were married in Cefalu, a town on the northern coast of Sicily.

Sally inherited the immigrant dream of carving out a better life and dreamed of escaping the suffocating small town in northwestern Louisiana where the family ended up, and going west. A common ambition, but in her case, one supplied to her by an older friend of her father’s who filled her head with fancy images of San Francisco.

L’Maison d’Amour

Location: San Francisco
Period: 1879-1886
Dramatis personae: Sally Ann Gray; patrons of brothel.

After Sally Ann and Spooner made it out to San Francisco, Spooner went back to Louisiana after a month or so, but Sally Ann stayed behind.

Initially she got work in a bar/brothel as a bartender, something she had been back home. The madam, Marie LaBlanc, another Louisiana transplant, took Sally under her wing, and eventually gave her more and more responsibilities until Sally Ann was essentially her second in command. While she did do some work as a prostitute, early on, over time she maneuvered herself more and more into management and took over upon Marie’s death, who had been killed by an obsessively jealous patron.

Sally spent seven years in San Francisco, and this song describes a typical night in which she verbally spars with a regular customer, who, while she fends of his advances, she acknowledges that he is certainly not the worst kind of man who visits the “house of love”.

Aftermath

Sally Ann Gray had been in San Francisco, the madam of a brothel, for the last seven years, when she gets the news that Spooner Magee has died. Spooner and Sally had come out to California in 1879 on a lark, and Sally just stayed. She comes back home to Louisiana for his funeral, and reconnects with Sam “Teaspoon” Magee, Spooner’s youngest son, whom she knew all through her childhood and high school years.

Sally and Teaspoon end up getting married, having six children, and happily living out their lives in this part of Louisiana. Teaspoon never asked about her life in California, and wouldn’t care in any event.

“Sons of Dixie”

SONS OF DIXIE
(F. D. Leone, Jr.)

“William Joseph Holmes”

This is the tale of two uncles.

Belinda Barnes (1880-1902) was a little different from the other girls of her country, something of a tomboy. But she was a pretty girl nonetheless. Her uncle William Joseph “Billy Joe” Holmes (1866-1893), her mother’s younger brother, at first showed her attention in a good way: taking her fishing, giving her little gifts, and in general making her feel special. Until that day when he took her riding in his fancy buggy out on the lonely roads and raped her.

The sent Belinda inward, quiet, and sullen. She worked even harder to tamp down her good looks, and told no one about what had happened.

But it did not go unnoticed by her other uncle, her father’s older brother, Campall “Camp” Barnes (1862-1943). He had told her that she should be herself no matter if that meant being different. He told her she was fine just as she was, but he also began to worry about her when she got so quiet and stand-offish. Because she had always felt close to him, she finally told him about what had happened. Camp was angered by the actions of Billy Joe Holmes, whom he knew from around the way.

The Raney family were well-known whiskey producers, and Billy Joe was often found hanging around the still, getting drunk and cutting up. Billy Joe Holmes was an unsavory character, not well-liked, and in fact considered “off” even for these parts. Camp Barnes knew what had to be done.

North Georgia, which was part of the Appalachian culture, had not much official law. People policed themselves, and meted out justice according to an age-old code of behavior. There was an idea that some men just needed killing.

LOCATION: Opelika, Alabama, north Georgia hills.
PERIOD: 1892-1893
DRAMATIS PERSONAE: William Joseph “Billy Joe” Holmes (1866-1893); Belinda Barnes (1880-1902); Campall “”Camp”” Barnes (1862-1943).

WILLIAM JOSEPH HOLMES
(F. D. Leone, Jr.)

Was livin’ in Opelika, Alabama;
Billy Joe Holmes was born in the Georgia hills.
Younger brother of Belinda Barnes’s mama;
Each year he’d come home; see to his bills.

Somethin’ bout him didn’t seem right;
Folks round here always said so.
He was wound a little too tight;
Had to watch your back around Billy Joe.

It happened when his niece was twelve,
He drug her innocence through the mud.
Uncle Billy warned Belinda not to tell;
A rusty stain on the buggy seat was her blood.

That’s when she began dressing down,
Didn’t want to be a pretty girl no more.
Would sulk off when Billy Joe came around;
Wouldn’t take the candy he brought from the store.

Rougher than a corn cob.
Darker than a depot stove.
Wilder than a mad dog.
Louder than a murder of crows.

William Joseph Holmes;
William Joseph Holmes.
His grave’s unknown;
There’s no tombstone,
For William Joseph Holmes.

Belinda’s favorite uncle was on her daddy’s side;
“Nothin’ wrong with being different,” he taught her.
When Belinda was ten her daddy died;
Camp Barnes treated Belinda like a daughter.

He asked her why she’d been so quiet,
That’s when she told him about uncle Billy.
Belinda looked at Campall and cried,
“Uncle Camp he made me feel so filthy.”

Everybody knew what Billy Joe liked;
He’d be found at either of two spots.
Campall made sure his fish knife,
Was in the bottom of his tackle box.

Sure enough Billy was at the Raney still site;
There he was, a-laughin’ and braggin’.
Billy Joe disappeared after that Sairdy night;
Sunday morning Camp washed out his wagon.

Rougher than a corn cob.
Darker than a depot stove.
Wilder than a mad dog.
Louder than a murder of crows.

William Joseph Holmes;
William Joseph Holmes.
His grave’s unknown;
There’s no tombstone,
For William Joseph Holmes.

“Winter Turns To Spring”

Belinda Barnes (1880-1902) grew up in the north Georgia hills and loved the outdoors. She was something of a tomboy, and was considered a little strange by her community. Because she felt ostracized she ended up spending most of the days alone, walking the hills, doing a little hunting and fishing, and generally living as most boys her age did.

An unfortunate event occurred in which she was molested by her uncle (her mother’s younger brother), Billy Joe Holmes (1866-1932), which only served to cause her to retreat further inward. But since by now her sexuality had been awakened, albeit in a negative fashion, she still began seeking out experiences with other men

This continued for a few years until she met a young man from a neighboring family, Wyatt Raney (1874-1934).

Wyatt went home to Georgia and married his sweetheart, Belinda and they had two children, Charles and Charlotte. After losingBelinda during the birth of his daughter, Wyatt retreated from the world, until his death in 1934.

LOCATION: North Georgia hills
PERIOD: 1892-1900
DRAMATIS PERSONAE: Belinda Barnes (1880-1902); Wyatt Raney (1874-1934); Billy Joe Holmes (1866-1932); Ransom Raney (1847-1929); August Raney (1875-1898).

WINTER TURNS INTO SPRING
(F. D. Leone, Jr.)

Belinda Barnes wasn’t like other girls;
Folks called her a tomboy,
Said she looked like a farm boy.
Wore a hunting cap, boots and overalls;
Could get the best of any boy her size.
There was a sadness behind her eyes.
She kept hidden a soft tender side,
She yearned to be touched;
Just not in her uncle’s truck.

Winter turns to spring
Barren trees will be green
Midnight will see the dawn
We press on

When he was one, Wyatt was orphaned;
They hung his father for killin’ his mother.
Raised by his uncle, his cousin Augie, like a brother.
Then, 1898 and San Juan Hill,
Wyatt and August chose to enlist;
The Raneys said, “fightin’ for Yankees was foolish.”
A cannonball took Wyatt’s leg;
Augie came back home to be buried.
Belinda and Wyatt married.

Winter turns to spring
Barren trees will be green
Midnight will see the dawn
We press on

They had two kids, Charles and Charlotte
But Belinda? Wyatt lost her,
Giving birth to his daughter.
1918 Charles went to war;
Wyatt did his best to dissuade him,
But Charlie would not obey him.
Wyatt closed his eyes, went home and raised his daughter.
Instead of honor, Charlie found death;
Wyatt cursed God with his last breath.

Winter turns to spring
Barren trees will be green
Midnight will see the dawn
We press on

“The North Georgia Hills”

Wyatt Raney (1874-1934) was the son of Isaac “Ike” Raney (1848-1874) and Martha “Mattie” McLemore (1848-1874). He was orphaned when his father murdered his mother because of jealousy.

After losing his wife during the birth of his daughter, Wyatt retreated from the world, until his death in 1934, using his last words and breath to curse God.

LOCATION: Fannin County, north Georgia
PERIOD: 1874-1934
DRAMATIS PERSONAE: Wyatt Raney (1874-1934); Isaac “Ike” Raney (1848-1874); Martha “Mattie” McLemore (1848-1874; Belinda Barnes (1880-1902)

THE NORTH GEORGIA HILLS
(F. D. Leone, Jr.)

The north Georgia hills;
Brown November fields.
His people came from Scotland,
Across the Appalachian mountains,
To the north Georgia hills;
The north Georgia hills.

“Sweetheart of Mine”

Beauchamp Raney was one of the middle children of Virgil Raney and Hazel Tate. His oldest brother, Vernon was the son who carried on the whiskey making tradition. However, they all helped, and Beau was smart, resourceful, and one of the more valuable members of the family business. However, he did not marry well.

His wife was 19 when they got married, and liked to go out and party, whereas Beau preferred staying close to home except those times when he and Vernon had to move the liquor. One thing led to another and Bess found herself entangled with a wealthy cotton planter, and she lost her head in this adulterous relationship.

Little did she know how Beau would react.

LOCATION: Mississippi outside of Vicksburg
PERIOD: 1947-48
DRAMATIS PERSONAE: Beauchamp Raney (1917-1949); Bess Baldwin (1920-1948)

SWEETHEART OF MINE
(F. D. Leone, Jr.)

Sweetheart of mine
Good mornin’
Next time you see me
You better run
You broke my heart
My sweet darlin’
Next time I see you
I’ll have a gun

By the time you see me
Be too late believe me
In my hand will be my .45
Sweetheart of mine

Your new sugar
I’ll leave alone
It ain’t his fault
I don’t blame him
Cheated and lied
Now you’re gone
Treated our vows
Like you never made ’em

Last thing you’ll see will be me
Shoot you where your heart should be
Watch the life leave your lyin’ eyes
Sweetheart of mine

You will learn
That I won’t let you
Walk over me
Like I was dirt
Be one time
Since I met you
That I will get
The last word

By the time you see me
Be too late believe me
In my hand will be my .45
Sweetheart of mine

Last thing you’ll see will be me
Shoot you where your heart should be
Watch the life leave your lyin’ eyes
Sweetheart of mine

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Vernon Raney (1910-1997)

Vernon Raney and Molly Motts

Margaret “Molly” Motts (1937-2015)

Otis Odom (1914-1960)

Molly Motts Raney Looks Back With Regret

Forrest Patton (1930-1963)

Donald Raney (1978) and Vern Raney (1980)

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Lonsom Raney (1828-1923)

Ransom Raney (1848-1905)

Isaac “Ike” Raney (1848-1874)

Wyatt Raney (1874-1934)

Ransom and Ike: Abel and Cain

Royal Raney (1868-1939)

The Raney Still

Belinda Barnes and Wyatt Raney

Wyatt Raney, Epilogue

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Aftermath

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