“The Laughing Man at the Door”

LOCATION: Monroe, Louisiana
PERIOD: 1970s-1990s
DRAMATIS PERSONAE: James “Jamie” Lamar Halladay (1973); Frank Halladay (1938-1993); Ann Marie Halliday (1974); Lee Ann Lucas (1953)

James “Jamie” Lamar Halladay was born in Monroe, Louisiana, in 1973. His father was a musician, guitar player, Frank Halladay, who played in a series of bands, traveling Texas, Louisiana and eventually Nashville. By the time Jamie was four, Frank Halladay stopped living with the family, which also included Jamie’s younger sister, Ann Marie, although not out of their lives altogether. He would show up on birthdays and Christmas, when he could.

James Charles Halladay (1913-1995), Jamie Halladay’s grandfather, was a fighter pilot who served with distinction in the Army Air Corps during WWII. He learned to fly as a crop dusting pilot for the Huff Daland Dusters, as part of the eradication of the boll weevil. This company, moved from Macon Georgia to Monroe Louisiana, in 1925 but Charlie didn’t hire on until 1933, but stayed with the company as it became a regional commercial carrier, which eventually became Delta Airlines.

Hi son Frank showed a talent for music early on and learned to play the guitar listening to the Grand Ole Opry and especially Hank Williams when he was still pretty small. While in high school he started a band with some of his friends and they got pretty good. Good enough to become the backup band for Webb Pierce and played on the Louisiana Hayride.

It while he was playing with Webb Pierce that Frank met the woman who was to eventually become his wife and Jamie’s mother, Lee Ann Lucas. But while Frank and Lee Ann were in love and did get married, the itinerant lifestyle of a musician did not make for a stable home life and the marriage failed. Frank tried to see his kids as much as he could, but was not a regular presence in their lives.

Nevertheless, he did have an impact on Jamie’s life.

On his twelfth birthday, Frank gave Jamie a guitar and taught him a few chords, but that was just the start for Jamie. He eventually got good enough to move to Nashville and get some gigs there playing behind country stars. He ended up breaking into the studio scene and became a member of the “A list” players, i.e. first call musicians for recording sessions.

It was while he was living in Nashville that Jamie began visiting a bar, McLemore’s, and became friends with the owner Jake McLemore (see song “McLemore’s“). In 2003, he would marry Jake’s daughter, Mercedes “Mercy”, and have a son whom he named Jacob Frank, after Jake and his father.

THE LAUGHING MAN AT THE DOOR
(F. D. Leone, Jr.)

In Monroe, Louisiana, standing at a window
A four year old sees his father drive away
Cowboy hat on his head, six gun on his hip
Jamie waves goodbye until his next birthday

Say goodbye to a man you hardly know
As tail lights disappear down the road
Say goodbye, watch him go
On a gray December day in Monroe

His daddy plays guitar in a traveling country band
And don’ live with them in Monroe anymore
Jamie has a sister, eighteen months old
Who don’t remember the laughing man at the door

Say goodbye to a man you hardly know
As tail lights disappear down the road
Say goodbye, watch him go
On a gray December day in Monroe

When Jamie turned twelve his dad gave him a guitar
Showed him where to put his fingers for his first chord
His dad died in ’93, when Jamie was nineteen
But who played better than the laughing man at the door

Say goodbye to a man you hardly know
As tail lights disappear down the road
Say goodbye, watch him go
On a gray December day in Monroe

© 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.

“Fannin Street”

LOCATION: Shreveport, Louisiana: St. Paul’s Bottoms
PERIOD: 1860s
DRAMATIS PERSONAE: Ruby Robison (1845-1933); Levi Motts (1845-1864); Coleman Broussard (1842-1910); Pearl Robison (1864-1936); Lucas Broussard (1866-1934)

Ruby Robison (1845-1933), young prostitute on Fannin Street; has daughter, Pearl, with Confederate soldier Levi Motts. After learning that Levi is killed at the Battle of Mansfield in April, 1864, Ruby marries his cousin Coleman Broussard and has four other children.

Ruby came to Shreveport during the Civil War, perhaps with Union troops up the Red River from New Orleans following the occupation of that city. Born in Ireland in 1845, her family may have been among the large numbers of Irish immigrants who sought refuge in America during the potato famines of the mid-nineteenth century. She most likely resorted to prostitution as a means of survival.

Ruby had a room in one of the dozens of brothels in downtown Shreveport area around Fannin Street, but her life took an unexpected turn when she met Levi Motts. Ruby and Levi began to have serious feelings for each other and Levi swore that he would find a way to get her out of the life she’d known as a prostitute. But the war got in the way, sending Levi off to fight and die in the Battle of Mansfield (see songs, “Fannin Street” and “Levi Motts is My Name“).

Ruby had let Levi know of her pregnancy and she gave birth to a daughter in 1865, whom she named Pearl. Levi’s cousin, Coleman Broussard chose to marry Ruby and they had four children together. Their first son, Lucas was the great-grandfather of Mike “Sarge” Broussard.

Ruby lived to age of 88, living to see not only her daughter grow up, get married, and have children of her own, but well into the lives of her great-grandchildren.

FANNIN STREET
(F. D. Leone, Jr.)

On Fannin Street, Fannin Street
There’s a room upstairs for the men she meets
She’s not theirs and never was,
Just what she does
On Fannin Street

There was one boy, fine and sweet
Not like the rest of Fannin Street
The only one she ever loved
In the room above
Fannin Street

On Fannin Street, Fannin Street
There’s a room upstairs for the men she meets
She’s not theirs and never was,
Just what she does
On Fannin Street

The boy he said he’d take her away
From the life she led one day
He left for Mansfield to the restless beat
Of Marching feet
In columns of grey

On Fannin Street, Fannin Street
There’s a room upstairs for the men she meets
She’s not theirs and never was,
Just what she does
On Fannin Street

In her room alone Ruby Robison
Heard that the Rebels had won
She went to Mansfield but there she cried
For the baby inside
And the boy who was gone

On Fannin Street, Fannin Street
There’s a room upstairs for the men she meets
She’s not theirs and never was,
Just what she does
On Fannin Street

© 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.

“1951”

LOCATION: Shreveport & Bossier, Louisiana
PERIOD: 1950s-2016
DRAMATIS PERSONAE: Luther Lee McLemore (1951); Agnes Tyler (1920-2005); Dorothy “DiDi” Baxter (1952); Charlie McLemore (1973); Sarah McLemore (1975)

Luther Lee McLemore was Jake McLemore‘s older brother. Born in 1951, Luther came of age during the turbulent period of the Sixties. This song has him looking back on those times in 2019 as a retired mailman living in his hometown, Shreveport, Louisiana.

Luther’s most vivid memories are from his teenage years, living through the assassinations of JFK, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, and the Vietnam War. However, Lyndon Johnson had created draft deferments for anyone in college, as well as a variety of minor medical conditions which could qualify as an exemption. This policy ultimately meant that while most Middle Class young men eligible for the draft had several avenues to avoid service, those from less affluent families were caught up in the war.

Luther was just young enough that his four years in college effectively placed him out of range of the draft, since by 1973 the US was deescalating the war effort, bringing soldiers home instead of sending more over.

After he graduated, Luther worked a number of dead-end jobs, but eventually took and passed the civil service exam. In 1976 he began working as a postman, which he did for the next forty years, retiring in 2016. But those forty years seem like a blur, overshadowed by his formative years during the Sixties.

1951
(F. D. Leone, Jr.)

My name is Luther McLemore
1951 is the year I was born
It made me who I am
Taught to say, “no, sir” and “yes, ma’am”

Was eleven in ’63
Saw my mother cryin’ at the TV
Mama said someone shot the president
I didn’t know then what it meant

Was in high school in ’68
The streets were filled with so much hate
They killed Martin Luther King
Then Bobby Kennedy, and a dream

Graduated in ’69
A man from the army tried to get me to sign
But I was lucky and got in a university
Plenty of others weren’t lucky like me

’76 I took the civil service exam
A post office in Bossier hired me as a mailman
Loved one woman, we had a couple of kids
But by ’88, we’d hit the skids

I’m retired now, living in Shreveport
I like a beer, sitting on my porch
Last forty years seem like a blur
Mostly I think about how things were
Last forty years seem like a blur
Mostly I think about how things were

© 2020 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 River and Jake”

LOCATION: Northwest Louisiana; north of Shreveport; Red River
PERIOD: 2015
DRAMATIS PERSONAE: Jacob “Jake” Tyler McLemore (1959); Pearl Boone Robison (1973)

An American historian in the 19th century described the frontier vanguard in the following words:

“Thus the backwoodsmen lived on the clearings they had hewed out of the everlasting forest; a grim, stern people, strong and simple, powerful for good and evil, swayed by gusts of stormy passion, the love of freedom rooted in their hearts’ core. Their lives were harsh and narrow; they gained their bread by their blood and sweat, in the unending struggle with the wild ruggedness of nature. They suffered terrible injuries at the hands of the red men, and on their foes they waged a terrible warfare in return. They were relentless, revengeful, suspicious, knowing neither ruth nor pity; they were also upright, resolute, and fearless, loyal to their friends, and devoted to their country. In spite of their many failings, they were of all men the best fitted to conquer the wilderness and hold it against all comers.

The Anglo-American 18th-century frontier, like that of the Spanish, was one of war. The word “Texan” was not yet part of the English language. But in the bloody hills of Kentucky and on the middle border of Tennessee the type of man was already made. ”

These were the McLemores who left Tennessee for Texas.

It didn’t take long for Jake to become bored with retirement, and he bought a diner in Shreveport where Pearl Robison happened to enter one day in January 2010 (see song, “Pearl + Jake“). For five years Jake and Pearl had a turbulent romantic relationship, before Pearl took to the road again (see song “Hit the Road“), heading west on U.S. 80, leaving Jake heart broken at 56.

Jake loved to fish, and to take his mind off Pearl, he’d go to the river and see if they were biting.

THE RIVER AND JAKE
(F. D. Leone, Jr.)

Long as I can remember
When Jake was sad he would go
On down to The River
With some bait and a pole

It’s the place he wants to be
When he needs to be alone
Jake’s gone down to The River
Every day since Pearl’s been gone

You can ask him where they’re biting
Or what he used for bait
Just don’t ask him anything about her
That’s between The River and Jake

Soon his mind will grow empty
With each cast he’ll forget
All the worries he brought with him
They’ll all fade with the sunset

You can ask him where they’re biting
Or what he used for bait
Just don’t ask him anything about her
That’s between The River and Jake

© 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.

“Blinkin’ Back a Tear”

LOCATION: Odessa, Texas
PERIOD: 1977
DRAMATIS PERSONAE: Jacob “Christmas” McLemore (1818-1863); Jacob Mac McLemore (1879-1977); Jake McLemore (1959).

Jacob Mac McLemore made and lost more money than any of the McLemore men. When he was fifteen he heard about the 1894 oil strike in East Texas. He started at the bottom working any job he could get, eventually learning enough to strike out on his own.

Jacob Mac McLemore never knew his father, who had been an outlaw-gunslinger who died a few months before he was born. Sam Summers McLemore (1852-1878) never even knew the 16-year old whore, Sally McCune, he was living with was pregnant when he went out in the street to face a younger and what turned out to be faster boy. Jacob was raised by Sally, who eventually was able to quit the life and lived out her days running a boarding house in Fort Worth. There’s some who say it was more than a boarding house, but others deny those rumors.

Indians found oil seeping from the soils of Texas long before the first Europeans arrived. They told explorers that the fluid had medicinal values. The first record of Europeans using crude oil, however, was for the caulking of boats in 1543 by survivors of the DeSoto expedition near Sabine Pass.

Melrose, in Nacogdoches County, was the site in 1866 of the first drilled well to produce oil in Texas. Other oil was found in crudely dug wells in Bexar County in 1889 and in Hardin County in 1893. But it was not until June 9, 1894, that Texas had a major discovery. This occurred in the drilling of a water well for the city of Corsicana. Oil caused that well to be abandoned, but a company formed in 1895 drilled several producing oil wells.

Jacob Mac was 15 when the Corsicana oil came in, and for the next sixty years he chased strikes all over Texas and Louisiana. He might make some money here, then invest it somewhere else only to see his investment evaporate in the dusty Texas wind.

Jacob was married and divorced four times, the last near the end of his life and the one which really broke him. Of the four marriages, only the first produced any children, one boy, Lee Allen (1903-1989), and a girl, Aurelia. Lee Allen was Jake McLemore’s grandfather.

If you were to ask those who knew him, what they would tell you about Jacob Mac McLemore was that, first and foremost, he was a decent man whose word was his bond. No one ever knew him to brag or lie and that he never made a deal that he did not keep, and usually made his partners money.

He died at the age of 98, dying peacefully in his sleep in an Odessa, Texas hospital room with his great-grandson, Jake, by his side. You might say that Jacob Mac lived an interesting life, but despite not enjoying consistent good luck he was always in good humor and very good company.

BLINKIN’ BACK A TEAR
(F. D. Leone, Jr.)

Just before his great-grandpa went in
The hospital for the last time
He told Jake the stories of their kin
A life that was all but left behind

Clear whiskey, flatfoot dancing at jamborees
Frontier women and the men they loved
One by one he handed down his memories
Jake was eighteen, couldn’t get enough

Under a clear blue West Texas sky
A bluetick hound layin’ at his feet
A single tear in the corner of Jake’s eye
He blinked it back from fallin’ down his cheek

Owen McLemore was born in 1791
In Tennessee he married Anabel
Before she died she gave him seven sons
He went to Texas then he went to hell

Owen’s great-grandson was Jake’s namesake
He made some money chasin’ the oil boom
There wuddn’t be nothin’ left for Jake
‘Cept this empty hospital room

Under a clear blue West Texas sky
A bluetick hound layin’ at his feet
A single tear in the corner of Jake’s eye
He blinked it back from fallin’ down his cheek

© 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.

“Hosston to Bastrop”

LOCATION: North Louisiana: Hosston, Springhill, Coushatta, Powhattan
PERIOD: 1990s
DRAMATIS PERSONAE: Tullison “Tully” Tate (1965-2013); Rosalie Broussard (1967); Sonny Tate (1936-1980)

Tully’s father was country singer Sonny Tate. Tully married Rosalie Broussard (born Vivian, LA; father, Mike “Sarge” Broussard) who was an unstable woman and runs off repeatedly from the family home. Initially after his marriage Tully and Rosalie lived in Mobile, Alabama but then they moved with their twin girls to Hosston, Louisiana. There he works at the Springhill pulp paper mill driving a timber truck and reconnects with his boyhood friends the Broussard and Thibodaux families.

Tully is a decent, hard-working, family man but who also likes to drink and party on occasion. His primary worry in life is his wife, Rosalie, who will disappear from time to time, leaving the twins unsupervised. For a while, Tully would track her down and bring her back home until, finally, he gives up and let’s her go.

Although his job in Springhill ended when they shut down the paper mill, he and his girls remained in Hosston until his death in 2013 after a short illness.

HOSSTON TO BASTROP
(F. D. Leone, Jr.)

I used to make my living driving a log truck
Hauling timber for the pulp paper mill
Take Highway 2, Hosston to Bastrop
Double back and unload at Springhill

The paper mill shut down, jobs all dried up
That stink it made, naw we sure don’t miss
Hear they gonna bring in a cross tie plant
Now we can smell them creosote pits

A case of beer on a Friday night
Fill a washtub with boiled shrimp and ice
We sure like get drunk and try to dance
We may be way up north but it’s still Louisian’

Gets real hot ’round here in the summer
August heat will melt the asphalt
Didn’t even hurt Randy Butcher when he got run’d over
His head was hard, the road was soft

A case of beer on a Friday night
Fill a washtub with boiled shrimp and ice
We sure like get drunk and try to dance
We may be way up north but it’s still Louisian’

Like to take my truck out One-Fifty-Seven
Stop at the Shongaloo Dairy Cup
Three-Seventy-One to Coushatta, then One to Powhatan
Just drive around where my daddy grew up

A case of beer on a Friday night
Fill a washtub with boiled shrimp and ice
We sure like get drunk and try to dance
We may be way up north but it’s still Louisian’

Betty Broussard brought her fiddle and bow
Someone gave a washboard to Greg Thibodeaux,
We sure like get drunk and try to dance
We may be way up north but it’s still Louisian’

© 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.

“Casper Cowan”

LOCATION: East Texas
PERIOD: 1950s-1980s
DRAMATIS PERSONAE: Casper Cowan (1951-1988); Annabel Wash (1955); Dalton Wash (1952)

Casper “Cap” Cowan (1951-1988) came from an upper-class Catholic family in East Texas.  He received a complete Catholic education, was an altar boy, the whole nine yards.  But as soon as he got his drivers license and drove himself, supposedly to mass, he avoided going to the early mass and told his family he would go to the 11:00 mass.  Of course, he never did.

He also rebelled against his expected role in the family business, oil development, nor did he do well in school, and in general, was thought of as a failure within his extended family.

He began to drink at a young age, repeatedly got in trouble with the law, married a girl, Annabel Wash (1955), from the wrong side of the tracks, whose brother, Dalton Wash (1952), was Cap’s best friend.

His behavior embarrassed and disappointed his family to the point when they sought advice from their priest, family doctors, and even psychiatrists.  Whose collective advice was to look into mental health for Cap, essentially to cure his alcohol problem which they saw as driving his behavioral dysfunction.

This help manifested itself into committing Cap to a psychiatric clinic that specialized in addiction and substance abuse. This was an upscale facility offering a variety of treatments, including electroconvulsive therapy (ECT).

After these treatments, Cap began hallucinating, the Bible and his religious background began to surface more alarmingly.  He quoted biblical verse, fragments from the Catholic mass and prayers, experienced visions, saw signs in everything, thought himself damned and beyond the grace of God.

Although his friend, Dalton tried to help him, Cap succumbed to his depression and frustration of feeling his mind was out of his control. He took his own life, at the age of 37, from a gunshot wound to the head.

CASPER COWAN
(F. D. Leone, Jr.)

My name is Dalton Wash,
Casper Cowan was my best friend;
He married my sister; he was a drunk.
Neither sat well with his kin.
The Cowans was highfallutin Catholic,
They told him, they were through;
Put him in a psych ward; the priest assured them,
“It was the right thing to do.”

They strapped him to a gurney,
On his head placed electrodes.
Shot a current through his brain;
Cap suffered some kind of overload.

My grandpa was a Pentacostal preacher,
Spoke in tongues; handled snakes.
One Sunday he was bit and it killed him;
Not for lack of faith.
Cap had been an altar boy,
He’d flash back to the Mass.
Whisper prayers in Latin,
Then just quit, and then laugh.

After those treatments,
Cap wasn’t the same.
Raving verses from the bible;
Believed he bore the mark of Cain.

In the madhouse the walls were stained,
With pain of a hundred years.
Naked pipes overhead,
Rusted from a thousand tears.
Cap wore a thousand-yard stare;
Spoke of visions and signs.
He said, “I am the offspring of the serpent.”
He saw phantoms, spectres, of all kinds.

“Hail Mary of Magdalene,
Most blessed advocate.
Holy Mary, pray for my sins;
Now and at the hour of my death.”

Came a point when all Cap thought about,
Was taking membership among the dead.
“This is my body, here is my blood,
Drink the wine, eat the bread.”
He surveys the face in the mirror,
Let his jaw go slack.
His hand trembles with the razor;
His vision dims to black.

They found him on the bed,
On the wall a spattered bloodstain.
The ceiling was flecked with red;
Victim of a fractured brain.

© 2025 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.

“Them Hardin Boys”

LOCATION: Southwest Texas, northern Mexico, New Mexico, Arizona.
PERIOD: May-August, 1944.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE: John Farley Hardin (1927-2020); Henry Adams Hardin (1928-2015); a Mexican pig drover; a Negro conjure woman; a hobo; a cougar; a wolf.

Henry Adams Hardin (1927-2015) and John Farley Hardin (1926-2020) were first cousins, born into an old Scots-Irish family. The Hardins were Texans, by way of Tennessee, and before that Appalachia, and before that they came from Scotland and Ireland.

The Scots-Irish were fiercely independent and stubborn. They were more likely to sell out and move farther into the frontier than assimilate. As soon as the bankers and lawyers entered their country, they were likely to pack up and move west. These two youngsters, John and Henry Hardin, were continuing the same pattern of their people which had been the norm for generations.

When he turned 18, John told his younger cousin Henry, that since they had been too young to join up to fight in the war, they should take off on an adventure of their own. “Let’s ride west,” (in this part of Texas, in 1944, the horse was still the primary mode of transportation) “and see what’s out there.”

So, early one morning in May they rode off before anyone was up, just before dawn, heading southwest.

The first town they came to was El Paso, the big city that their parents had planned on settling in, but events dictated that they settle in Van Horn, about 120 miles. A half day’s ride, they crossed the river and had lunch; rode further south and made camp that night in Mexico.

Their journey took them back across the river into Texas, through Sierra Blanca; Las Cruces, NM; Deming; Lordsburg; Douglas, AZ; Bisbee; Tombstone; Benson. And finally, three months later, they rode into Tucson, dusty with an injured wolf on the back of John’s horse.

Along the way they encounter a philosophical Mexican pig drover, a mysterious Negro fortune teller, a soured itinerant ragman, and are adopted by a wolf who ends up saving their lives from a cougar, and they his.

THEM HARDIN BOYS
(F. D. Leone, Jr.)

Was a cool May morning when they set out
John got Henry up before full light.
“Let’s go if we’re going – before they’re awake.”
“Okay, just let me get my eyes right.”
Dawn was behind them as they trotted off,
Heading southwest to the Rio Grande.
They crossed at midday; stopped for lunch;
Over biscuits and bacon they made a plan.
 
A pig drover welcomed them to Mexico:
“Los cerdos son un misterio,
¿Qué puede saber uno de uno?
Un cerdo es un cerdo.”
“John, what was that fella saying’?”
“That he’s never understood a hog.”
“Well hell, why would he want to?”
They spurred their horses into a jog.
 
They rode through the heat of the afternoon,
Quiet save for the spat of the Henry’s snuff.
The constant clop and chink of the horses;
A pretty sound as there ever was.
“John, do you ever think of God?”
“No; well, some. With the seasons.” 
“John, that fella back there,
Do you think we met him for a reason?”
 
“Henry, have you seen that lobo off behind,
Been following us these few miles?”
Yeah, I seen him, sometimes;
Last night his eyes were two tiny fires.”
Within the hour the weather cooled;
Drops of rain fell the size of small stones.
They could smell the wet earth and horses,
The wet leather … they rode on.

The path took them through a locust wood;
Huge bean pods hung more and more.
A small glade, a raw board shack,
A rotted porch; they knock on the door.
“Come in here,” she said and stood aside;
She was scarce four feet tall and coal black.
Assorted bowls, candlesticks, a table;
“Set down,” she instructed; they sat.
 
Her eyes were not more than two cracks,
A face carved from matte black wax. 
She raised her arms.  To speak? Perhaps.
“Death arrives, you survive.” Then, thunderclaps.
That night they were awakened by lobo’s growl;
Sensing danger the boys sat up upright.
Fierce howling, yapping, snapping of teeth;
Dawn, a dead puma; lobo bloody, but alive.
 
John craddled the wolf behind his saddle,
“Strange, lobo beatin’ puma one-on-one.”
“Johnny, do you resent missing the war?”
“Waste of time; we were too young.”
Two fishermen passed along the river path;
Under the bridge an ancient hobo;
He sat scowling upon the new day. 
As they approach, his story is told.
 
“I went down this river in aught one;
With a carnival for two year I run.
In Georgia we seen a fella hung;
Damned us all for the crime he never done.” 
“I seen strange things in my time;
Seen that cyclone come through; took my breath.
I seen all I want to see; know all I want to know.
Today, I just look forward to death.”

© 2025 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.

“Homer and April, Virgil and June”

LOCATION: Texas: Big Spring, Van Horn, Mexico
PERIOD: 1925-1944
DRAMATIS PERSONAE: Homer Hardin (1902-1985); Virgil Hardin (1902-1992); April Johnson (1907-1986); June johnson (1907-1988); John Farley Hardin (1927-2020); Henry Adams Hardin (1928-2015).

Twin brothers, Homer (1902-1985) and Virgil Hardin (1902-1992) married twin sisters, April (1907-1986) and June Johnson (1907-1988). This was 1925 in west Texas. However, their forebears had come a long way to get here.

They had come from the northeast, across the Appalachian mountains. They came from the Atlantic seaboard and before that, from Ireland and Scotland. They took up land and built one-and two-room cabins and left them unpainted.  Married among themselves, produced children, and added more rooms as needed, and did not paint them either.

Their descendants planted cotton and corn in the bottom land and in hidden hollers made whiskey from the corn and traded or sold what they did not drink. Some went still further west into Texas, where they found life freer, but harsher.

These were the Scots-Irish, who were accustomed to moving on when times got rough, starting over, and creating new lives in the unsettled frontier. Rejecting civilization as represented by lawyers and bankers, and above all, any form of government.

In the case of the Hardins and Johnsons, after they married, they enjoyed about four years of prosperity before the Great Depression hit Big Spring, Texas. And like generations of Scots-Irish before them,  they took all their belongings and went looking for a better life with a cow and two pigs.

They were heading to El Paso, the largest town in their region, but did not make it. Circumstances forced them to stop in Van Horn, Texas, a little northeast of El Paso.

Here they started over and made a hard-scrabble subsistence life there. However, once they were old enough, the two oldest boys, John and Henry, decided to strike out on their own and try their luck further west.  Repeating the same generations-old pattern of their people.

HOMER AND APRIL, VIRGIL AND JUNE
(F. D. Leone, Jr.)

May of nineteen and twenty-five;
Them Hardin twins married the Johnson girls,
Homer and April, Virgil and June.
The world was their oyster, their love the pearl.
First few years were happy and carefree,
Both couples were with children blessed.
Then the Depression hit Big Spring;
They loaded up two wagons and they left.
 
Dusk that first day one wagon broke down. 
A bent old man came limping up the road,
“They’s worse weather a-coming;
Hard weather. Be foretold.”
That night high winds, driving rain;
Hail bounced upon the ground like small pale eggs.
The women sought shelter under a wagon;
The horses moaned on the trembling legs.
 
It was peaceful in the morning after the storm,
The women began collecting their scattered goods.
Their food was all ruined, so Virgil took the gun:
Headed to a small stand of cottonwoods.
The horses were skittish, the wagons soggy,
Virg had got a rabbit; they ate, then headed out.
April and June started singing from a hymnbook;
Despite what they’d been through, they remained unbowed.
 
When they started out they hoped to make El Paso,
But only got as far as Van Horn.
Homer and Virgil scouted around,
Found some land they thought might make a decent farm.
They built two cabins, side by side;
Added more rooms with each new child.
No matter how hard they worked each year,
On that harsh land, fortune never smiled.
 
The two oldest boys were growing restless,
In the summer of 19 and 44.
They were old enough to have an adventure,
But still too young to be called off to war.
They left with no warning, well before dawn;
Crossed the Rio Grande, and rode still further west.
At dusk they eyed the sun in its setting;
The western sky a bloody red.

© 2025 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.

“From Burden to Bowden”

LOCATION: Dallas County, Texas
PERIOD: 1850s-2010s
DRAMATIS PERSONAE: Henry Baxter (Burden) “Bowden” (1833-1915); Bertha Caldwell (1835-1918); Alan Edward Burden (1850-1916); Archibald Edward Burden (1802-1859); Margaret Alice Bowden (1918); Earl Walker (1996).

Henry Baxter (Burden) “Bowden” (1833-1915) was a thorn in the side of his family, especially his father and older brother. During the years before the Civil War Henry began to find meaning in the Abolitionist Movement, and became politically activated in that direction. This of course rubbed the rest of his family and neighbors the wrong way. While the majority of Southerners were strongly in favor of maintaining slavery, most were too poor to own slaves themselves, but as a matter of pride in their region they would fight to preserve the institution.

Things came to a head when Henry inlisted in a Union regiment and actually went to war against his family and state. His company saw a lot of action, and he fought at Gettysburg where he lost his arm.

The song begins with one of his later descendants, Earl Walker (1996), describing how his grandmother, Margaret Alice Bowden (1918), ended up with Henry’s wooden arm prothesis which, for some reason, they had kept and passed down through the family.

FROM BURDEN TO BOWDEN
(F. D. Leone, Jr.)

Grandma kept that wood arm in the attic;
We used to take it out on Halloween; run around with it.
Was told it was worth some money by a Dallas appraiser;
The army gave him that one; he was buried with a better one he got later.
Funny after all this time, how things turn out;
The Bowdens were a big deal in Texas, I don’t misdoubt.

First heard of Henry when I was a child,
Told he didn’t talk much, never smiled.
Stand-offish, had gotten above his raising.
Had some queer ideas, like going to hear a-coupla Yankees debating;
He’d wander off with a book, on his own;
One day he just spoke up, said “slavery’s wrong.”

The Burdens was poor, had no slaves, didn’t much care;
Only fought cause them blue bellies had come down there.
After it was done, they never forgave or forgot;
The Burdens cursed Henry, cuz it was for the North that he had fought.
When Henry lost his arm his daddy claimed,
“You can bet it was a Burden that blew th’ arm away.”

Married Bertha Caldwell; they had a bunch of kids;
Ten or twelve, a big number like that, they did.
Took the whole bunch to Texas,1885 or 6;
His grandson got into oil; they got pretty rich.
Strange thing was, after Henry changed his name,
You’d a-thot they been happy? Nah; was just more ashamed.

At the Gettysburg reunion old enemies embraced;
Henry’s nephew, Alan, only showed up to spit in his face.
Them Burdens could carry a grudge; quick to take offense;
Specially if it was some kin of theirs; Henry made no amends.
That was long ago, a hundred years by now;
Just some stories I been told, anyhow …

© 2025 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.