LOCATION: Big Spring, Texas
PERIOD: 1903
DRAMATIS PERSONAE: John Henry Hardin (1878-1949); “Henry Adams Hardin (1926-2015); John Farley Hardin (1927-2020)
Homer and Virgil Hardin were distant relatives of Louanne Bowden, on her mama’s grandma’s side. They typified a certain mindset among the American pioneers: ruthless independence and no need for civilization. For a while, the kind of life they desired could still be found by leaving the settled towns and cities and going further west.
GO WEST
(F. D. Leone, Jr.)
John Henry Hardin was an engineer
Railroading for the T&P
He had a good wife and two ornery sons
This would’ve been about nineteen and aught-three
The Hardins come from North Carolina
Alabama, then Texas in eighteen-seventy-nine
They would move on about every ten years
Leaving progress: the lawyers and the bankers behind
And go west, hoping to stay free
Even if it meant a harder life
Go west, hanging on to liberty
Life ain’t worth living otherwise
Homer and Virgil were John Henry’s sons
They were dyed-in-the-wool true Hardins, them two
Stuck there in Big Spring, standing at the tracks
Staring and waiting for the coal train to blow through
Each had a nickel in his pocket
Earned that mornin’ from chopping two cords of wood
When they were younger they’d put ’em on the track
But they been saving their nickels to get out for good
And go west, hoping to stay free
Even if it meant a harder life
Go west, hanging on to liberty
Life ain’t worth living otherwise
© 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.
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