“The Burden Family Blues”

LOCATION: Northern Ireland; Virginia; Boston; New York City; Tennessee; Marengo County, Mississippi; Dallas, Texas.
PERIOD: 1617-1978
DRAMATIS PERSONAE: Owen Tucker “Tick” Burden (1937-2019); Albert Burden (1910-1978); Joseph Charles Burden (1848-1910); Alan Edward Burden (1850-1916); Owen Burden (1879-1954); Henry Baxter (Burden) “Bowden” (1829-1883); Charles Joseph Burden (1825-1896); Edward Burden (1802-1859); Charles Owen Burden (1776-1861); Albert Peter Burden (1737-1798); Betty Akins (Burden) (1759-1822); Peter Albert Burden (1682-1749);  Edmund Owen Burden (1639-1714); Samuel Peter Burden (1617-1656)

Tick Burden wakes up in jail after a DUI which occurred on December 15, 1978. The rest of the story regresses (in 40 year spans) back to the 17th century when the first Burden ancestor emigrated from Northern Ireland to America:

Samuel Peter Burden (1617-1656) grows up with his father who had joined a sailing mission with Sir Walter Raleigh in 1618.  Sam leaves northern Ireland in 1635 sailing to American.  Landing in Virginia it wasn’t long before he met and married a young Scottish girl. They have a son, Edmund Owen Burden (1639-1714) in 1639, who is the first American born Burden ancestor.

Edmund Owen Burden (1639-1714) moved with his family to the Boston area, and as a young man he happened to be in town when the Quaker evnagelist Mary Dyer was being hanged.  At that time, despite the Puritans leaving England due to religious persecution, they themselves were intolerant of Quakerism, which was outlawed at the time.  Mary Dyer was arrested, convicted of violating the ban on Quakerism, and hanged either onMay 31st or June 1st in 1658.

Peter Albert Burden (1682-1749) the next Burden in the line ran off from Boston to New York hoping to be taken on a sialing ship, looking for adventure.  He managed to get hired on the Adventure Galley, William Kidd’s ship headed for Africa.  Kidd saw that the pirates he was attempting to police were taking home more ricches than he was, and he decided to turn traitor against the King and became a notrious pirate himself.  eventually he was hanged for his crimes.  By that time Peter had abandoned his dsailing ambitions and remained on dry land for the rest of his life.

Albert Peter Burden (1737-1798) is caught up in the fervor of rebellion from England at the time of Founding Fathers.  When he is in his late ’30s he joins up the militia and serves under several generals.  In 1778 his division is under general command of George Washing in New Jersey. The battle of Monmouth, also known as the Battle of Monmouth Court House, was fought near Monmouth Court House in modern-day Freehold Borough, New Jersey, on June 28, 1778, during the American Revolutionary War. After the battle, an American victory, Albert takes a few minutes and writes a letter home.

Henry Baxter (Burden) “Bowden” (1829-1883) does not agree with the rest of his family on the question of slavery.  As a consequence he changes his last name from Burden to Bowden and identifies as an abolitionist. He eventually joins up to fight on the Union side, potentially against his own brothers.  Henry loses an arm at Gettysburg, ending his military career, and settling down in Texas.

Joseph Charles Burden (1848-1910); Alan Edward Burden (1850-1916); Owen Burden (1879-1954) Owen Burden, son of Alan, and nephew of Joe, volunteers and fights in teh Apanish-American War of 1898.  While his father and uncle are making whiskey, they discuss the logic of Owen’s decision to go to war in a cause they don’t entirely understand.

Albert Burden (1910-1978) is in Texas and happens into a saloon on the night of the championship boxing match between Max Schmeling and Joe Louis. They were to fight twice, Schmeling winning the first in 1936 and losing the second in 1938. The two fights came to embody the broader political and social conflict of the time. As the most significant African American athlete of his age and the most successful black fighter since Jack Johnson, Louis was a focal point for African American interest in the 1930s. Moreover, as a contest between representatives of the United States and Nazi Germany during the 1930s, the fights came to symbolize the struggle between democracy and fascism.

Louis and Schmeling developed a friendship outside the ring, which endured until Louis’ death on April 12, 1981.  Schmeling reportedly covered a part of the costs of Louis’ funeral, at which he was a pallbearer. Schmeling died 24 years later on February 2, 2005, at the age of 99. Both Louis and Schmeling are members of the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

This bring us up to 1978 when Albert dies at the same time Tick, his son, is sitting in a Dallas jail cell after his DUI.

THE BURDEN FAMILY BLUES
(F. D. Leone, Jr.)

Face down on a cold concrete floor;
Tick Burden inhales ammonia and vomit.
Coming to in a Dallas county jail cell;
Pats his pockets for keys and wallet.
“Burden: get up, you made bail.”
His brother-in-law hands him a six-pack.
“I need to get my truck out of impound?”
“Your pa’s dead; Allie said to bring you back.”

A slender cheroot clamped in his jaw,
Albert Burden crossed to the bar.
Took a handful of silver dollars
Spread them out in the shape of a star.
The big fight was on the radio,
June, 1938, a title bout.
“Max shoulda retired; he’s old and  slow.”
“Th’ young buck’s gonna lay a beatin’ on the Kraut.”

“Why’d Owen go an’ fight with Yankees?”
“Aw, Alan, y’know, do his bit.
Anyway there ain’t no more blue and gray,
We’re just Americans, and all that shit.”
July 1898, making Missipy moonshine;
Hardly moving, hardly talking, they just sat.
“Joe, where’n the hell is Cuba anyway?”
Joe shook the jar, turned, and spat.

Henry changed his name to Bowden from Burden,
Because he was an abolitionist.
1858 he heard Lincoln and Douglas;
For the Union side he would enlist.
His father Edward and his brother Charles,
Would forever curse his fake name.
Henry Bowden lost an arn at Gettysburg;
“A Burden ball got ‘im,” his father liked to claim.

“1778, June, Monmouth:
Dear Betty, the Redcoats have faded back.
I was with Greene, our cannons were jumping;
We held our line against each British attack.
Must admit I was scared half to death,
And prayed for my return to you and Charles.
I’m proud to have served with such men;
General Washington handed out cigars.”

Peter Burden ran off to New York,
Looking to join the crew of a sailing ship.
William Kidd took him on the Adventure Galley;
They sailed to Africa on his first trip.
1698 Kidd stood for King and country,
But switched sides to a pirate life of crime.
1701 he had a rope around his neck;
Peter kept to dry land till the day he died.

1658 Mary Dyer came to Boston,
To preach the Quaker faith.
She was arrested in New Haven,
Hanged the 31st of May.
Edmund Burden was among the onlookers,
Swore he’d no more be a Christian.
If Puritans could murder a Quaker,
Then to all preaching he would not listen.

1617 Samuel Burden was born;
The next year his father sailed with Walter Raleigh.
Never to be heard from again;
Samuel Peter Burden grew up without a daddy.
1635 he sailed to America,
Settled in Virginia, and wed a Socttish girl.
They had a son in 1639;
The first Burden born in the New World.

© 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.

“Sally & Tater Sell the Candlelite”

Owen Tucker “Tick” Burden (1937-2019) abandoned his common law wife, Alma Tate (1940-1978), as soon as he heard that she was pregnant and did not return for going on twenty years, ten years after Alma had died. His son, Tucker Tate Burden (1968), Tick and Alma’s son, was then about 20 and working as a bartender in his grandmama’s tavern, the Candlelite Inn. The boy’s mother, called him Tucker but his father called him Tate, or affectionately, Tater. The boy preferred Tuck.

As soon as Tick Burden showed back up at the Candlelite, as was his nature began acting like some kind of boss, so Tuck, something of a chip off the old block, decided to do a runner, much like his father had done twenty years previous. And he too did not return from nearly twenty years which by that time, his grandmama was dead and Tick had been running the Candlelite all that time.

Tick’s long time waitress, Sally Ann Kirk (1972), and the sweetheart of all the male patrons of the Candlelite, always dreamed of inheriting the bar from Tick as some point, so she stuck around all that time. However, she and Tick had never been anything other than friends, Tick acting as a kind of stand-in father figure.

When Tucker came back, one night after drinking about half a bottle of whiskey, he decided to burn down the Candlelite. He didn’t much care if he burned up his father either. But just about when he was going to light the fire, Sally came out and they stood face to face, and that was all it took for them to feel they were destined for each other.

Tater and Sally fell into each others arms, began living as if they were married, and had two kids. Sally’s long time dream finally came true when Tick died in 2019, and she and Tater took over the bar. They went ahead and legalized their union, sold the Candlelite soon after and bought a nice house in Abilene, Texas – about 160 miles west, further down Highway 80 – where they raised their two children: Owen Edgar Burden (2009) and Ann Burden (2011), and grew old together.

LOCATION: Arlington, Texas; Abilene, Texas.
PERIOD: 2008-2019
DRAMATIS PERSONAE: Tucker Tate Burden (1968); Sally Ann Kirk (1972); Owen Tucker “Tick” Burden (1937-2019), Alma Tate (1940-1978).

SALLY & TATER SELL THE CANDLELITE
(F. D. Leone, Jr.)

Summer air thick as molasses;
Moon hanging’ low around midnight.
Bottle of whiskey, box of matches,
Tater crept up to the Candelite.
Sally Kirk, a cute little thing;
The men all say she still looks alright.
Twenty years she held on to a dream;
While waiting tables at the Candlelite.

Tick Burden often talks about his past;
About his life, the ups and downs.
When he spoke of his son Sally asked,
“How come Tater don’t come around?”
Tick was sitting alone at the bar,
Going over that night’s receipts.
Outside there’s a passing car;
A soft rain falls on empty streets.

Tate  poured the whiskey along the black wall,
Burning down the bar was the plan.
Threw the bottle like he throwed a football;
Cursed the match that bit his hand.
That same night, pretty late,
Sally was bringing out the trash.
She came face to face with Tate;
He froze, holding a lit match.

Neon shadows in the parking lot;
Iridescent puddles pink, green, and blue.
Tater cursed and let the match drop,
“Tick talked about a son, is that you?”
Ten more years the Candlelite was well lit,
Till Tick Burden died in 2019.
Sally and Tate decided to sell it,
Buy a big house in Abilene.

© 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.

“Henrietta, Alma, and Tucker”

In the wake of being abandoned, pregnant, by her lover Tick Burden, Alma Tate begins the hard road of her life. Struggling with being dominated by an overbearing and judgmental mother, Henrietta Tate, who could not help but make Alam feel like a failure in her choice of a father for her child, Alma’s life becomes one of working menial jobs in her mother’s bar/restaurant and drinking.

Tucker Tate is born without a father and the only information he gets is what he is told mostly by his grandmother, which does not paint a positive image of the man who contributed to his existence. Nevertheless, Tucker begins to grow up reasonably happy until he is confronted with his mother’s accidental suicide when he is ten years old.

As soon as Tucker is old enough his grandmother puts him to work in the bar, serving drinks to a regular cohort of local characters and drunks until one day his father returns andimmediately begins to order him around.

Tick Burden is unrepentant, and belligerent, which brings Tucker to the moment he chooses to escape this growing hellish life. This throws the two protaganists, Henrietta and Tick, (ironically the two poles of oppression and disappointment in both Alma’s and Tuckers lives) into business together at the Candlelite Inn.

Tick takes over the day-to-day management of the business while Henrietta retreats into the past and dementia until finally passing away at 86.

LOCATION: Dallas, Texas
PERIOD: 1968-2008
DRAMATIS PERSONAE: Alma Tate (1940-1978); Tucker Tate (1968); Tick Burden (1937-2019); Henrietta Tate (1922-2008).

HENRIETTA, ALMA, AND TUCKER
(F. D. Leone, Jr.)

It was 4pm on a Wednesday afternoon,
When Alma realized that Tick was gone.
She walked in a daze from room to room;
Then sat down with the fact she was alone.
She hated that her mama had been right,
And waited for the told-you-so.
The seed Tick had planted that fateful night,
Was the one good thing he did before he’d go.

The violent night Tucker was born,
Outside strong wind and thunder.
Between pangs of labor and the storm,
Alma looked around with childlike wonder.
Then, a hunger.

The rain had stopped, the sky was gray,
The moon was a ghost.
Alma felt herself slowly fading away;
Poured a drink and tossed it down her throat.
Tucker Tate grew up to be a man;
Never knew his father just what he was told.
Not much by his mother mostly from his gran;
He was the issue of a broken mold.

Tucker tended bar in his grandma’s place,
He was setting up to an almost empty room.
A man with a worn but familiar face,
Swaggered into the dark saloon.
Tucker met his father that afternoon.

Late September rain on the roof,
The Candlelite Inn on Highway 80.
Tick Burden hollered from a corner booth;
“Boy, bring a drink to your daddy.”
Tucker Tate disappeared that night,
Grabbed a eastbound freight and was gone.
His grandma stared out the backdoor of the Candlelite,
At her daughter Alma’s gravestone.

Alma had succumbed to drink and depression,
Ten years ago that June.
She’d finally run out of any reason;
And laid down her mop and broom,
A last breath alone, in her room.

Henrietta held on and persevered,
With Tick’s help, the bar stayed open
He ran the Candlelite for the next 20 years;
While Henrietta grew old and broken.
She obsessed over habit and routine,
Against her will, her mind rebelled.
Spent her time with mem’ries and things unseen,
Nothing else really mattered at all.

Old age had freed her from conceit,
And desires of the flesh.
With some reluctance, almost deceit,
She watched her scrapbook flare into ash;
It all ended with a flash.

© 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.

“Tick Burden’s Dream”

Tucker “Tick” Burden (1937-2019) came from an old Texas family, of Scottish descent. The patriarch Charles Owen Burden (1776-1834) came to America in 1800 at the age of 24, at a time of high confidence after defeating the great British Empire. His son, Edward Burden (1802-1836), produced Tick’s great-great-grandfather who retained the name whereas his brother, Henry Baxter Bowden (1829-1863), altered it to Bowden so that he would avoid the obvious negative association with the name Burden.

This created a schism among the family with the Burdens (the smaller branch) hardly socializing with the Bowdens.

Tick grew up in relative comfort, his father Albert Burden (1910-1986) having had a successful career as a cattle agent, not raising them himself but arranging auctions and large stock sales in North Central Texas.

However, from an early age, Tick was a dreamer and ne’er-do-well. As soon as he could Tick ran off, working only when he had to at various menial jobs: day laborer, miner, even an itinerant gambler for a short while. He enlisted in the army to avoid criminal charges but then deserted four months later.

He went north and got involved with a bootlegger, learning how to distill moonshine in the process, which came in handy. However, he missed Texas and made his way back south, getting a job in a tavern outside of Dallas on Highway 80.

The owner, Henrietta Tate (1916-2008), was a widow woman with a daughter, Alma Tate (1940-1978), a few years younger than Tick, who was around 30 by this time. Tick must have appeared dashing to the young and inexperienced girl who fell for him, and gave herself to him, getting herself pregnant. As soon as Tick heard the girl’s naive romantic dreams of running off, he did what he always did when he found himself facing consequences he would rather not, run.

Tick’s story is told in two parts, the second half of the song tells in straight-forward fashion Tick’s life up to the point of him abandoning Alma. The first half describes Tick on the road (presumably after he runs from the Tates), experiencing some cryptic dreams and ending up at a cemetery, either physically at Alma’s grave or dreaming he was.

LOCATION: Texas; Oklahoma, Missouri, Illinois
PERIOD: 1950s-1980s
DRAMATIS PERSONAE: Tucker “Tick” Burden (1937-2019); Henrietta Tate (1916-2008); Alma Tate (1940-1978).

TICK BURDEN’S DREAM
(F. D. Leone, Jr.)

My name is Tick Burden, got a hobo soul;
Cutting’ and running has taken a toll.
One did love me, but I chose a train to ride;
Been ten years since that one died.

Grey moon above me, skirted by a cloud;
I trudge through the’ mist, and overgrown ground.
Come to a bridge, crawl underneath;
A storm gathers darkly; I go to sleep.

Seven gray sisters, all in a row;
Whisper foreign words, I do not know.
When I awake the rain has stopped;
The air is electric, humid and hot.

Thunder shakes the ground, lightning zigzags;
On my tongue I can taste something like brass.
Seven grey sisters, all dressed in blue;
The dream nags at me like a pebble in my shoe.

I’m standing at a grave, among ancient headstones,
Praying for forgiveness from one who is gone.
The living carry death, until the final surrender;
The void is not a curse, the dead do not remember.

Toppled markers look like melted candle wax;
I sit bolt upright as a tree limb snaps.
Somewhere in the dark, a banjo and fiddle;
Haunted midnight music, the hour of the devil.

I look up the slope to a wet yellow sedge,
And see a grove where went I can lay my head.
I dream of a black snake coiled at my feet;
Three eggs in its belly; my journey’s almost complete.

The seven blue sisters appear to glow,
Phantoms dancing like ghoulish scarecrows;
Chanting strange curses with crooked fingers raised,
They mock me with their laughter; I run from this place.

He ran to Oklahoma and then Missouri,
Crossed to Illinois on a Mississippi ferry.
A bootlegger in Chicago and Detroit;
Sold moonshine whiskey in a Negro juke joint.

A gambler, prospector, hired out on day labor;
Enlisted in the army; deserted four months later.
Lived on cheap food, endless coffee, and cigarettes;
His clothes smelled of whiskey, tobacco, and sweat.

Late summer sun, August turns to September,
Cooling days fade like coal fire embers.
A job at a tavern out on old Highway 80,
Run by a widow, a Dallas Jew lady.

That’s when he met Henrietta and Alma Tate;
The violent summer of 1968.
Alma was the daughter, an only child, like he;
She left scented notes in the hollow of a tree.

His idea of love came from a magazine;
Alma’s eyes followed him, but he had never seen.
One night she gave herself for him to cherish;
Then spoke suddenly and wildly of marriage.

She pleaded that they could run off together;
Dreamed of a life far away from her mother;
Spoke of the child in her belly and there placed his hand;
A cold fear gripped him; and so, Tick Burden ran.

The grade crested where the northbound freights slowed,
To a crawling gait so that a man could grab ahold.
Tick reached for a boxcar and held the ladder fast;
In an icy rain the gray sisters stood as he passed.

His name was Tick Burden, a vagabond;
Seen most of this country and places beyond.
Slept uncertain under willow and pin oak,
Came and went like autumn woodsmoke.

© 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.

Demopolis, Alabama

Demopolis is the largest city in Marengo County, in west-central Alabama. The population was 7,162 at the 2020 census.

The city lies at the confluence of the Black Warrior River and Tombigbee River. It is situated atop a cliff composed of the Demopolis Chalk Formation, known locally as White Bluff, on the east bank of the Tombigbee. It is at the center of Alabama’s Canebrake region and is also within the Black Belt region.

Demopolis was founded in the early 1800s after the fall of Napoleon’s empire. It was named by a group of French expatriates, a mix of exiled Bonapartists and other French refugees who had settled in the United States after the overthrow of the colonial government in Saint-Domingue by enslaved workers. Napoleon had sent troops there in a last attempt to regain control of the island, but they were defeated, largely by high mortality due to yellow fever.

The name, meaning in Greek “the People’s City” or “City of the People”, was chosen to honor the democratic ideals behind the endeavor. First settled in 1817, it is one of the oldest continuous settlements in the interior of Alabama. French colonists had founded Mobile on the coast in the early 18th century. Demopolis was incorporated on December 11, 1821. (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 4.0)

“Getting Sober in Dallas”

Louanne Bowden came from an old money section of Dallas. Her family was one of a couple of dozen Texas people whose history in Texas go back before statehood. The Bowden money originally came from cattle, but then oil, her father was an executive in the petroleum industry, and Louanne grew up in comfort. Louanne’s rebellion took the form of a bad marriage to Ronnie Raney, whom she met while at Ole Miss.

Ronnie Raney would show up at football games with a few gallons of moonshine whiskey, which his family sold all around Mississippi. He’d fill pint bottles for the college boys, $5 each; and usually sold out before the game was over.

Ronnie Raney was no good, and would often drink and when Louanne would say something that got him riled up, he’d hit her. Still she left school and followed him to Vicksburg where they rented a shotgun house.

One evening, she’d finally had enough of his drinking and violence, and shot him dead. She never denied it, and was convicted and sent to prison, sentenced to 20 years. However, after serving 12, a judge commuted her sentence to time served, ruling what she’d done was justified homicide. The catalyst to this decision was the death of Louanne’s grandmother, and because of the time of the season, and this particular judge feeling generous allowed mercy to inform the better part of his judgment.


She came back home when her grandmother died, but couldn’t fit back in the society of Highland Park, and began drinking pretty heavily.

Charlie Bennett was four years older than Louanne, and had gone to the same high school. He was a star football player and went to University of Texas on a full athletic scholarship. However during his third game, he suffered a career ending knee injury. It was at this point that Charlie began partying, drinking, and in general drowning his frustration and grief over his lost football future, and performed poorly at school. However, he managed to graduate with a business administration degree, and ended up in Dallas, as a former high school star, selling cars at one of the larger Chevrolet dealerships.

He married his high school girlfriend, and they promptly had two children, two boys two years apart. Although Charlie was fairly successful as a car salesman, his drinking only got worse, leading finally to tragic results. One day, he was supposed to pick up his sons at school. Charlie was in no condition to drive, and after picking up the boys, crossed the double line, and plowing into a moving truck going 60 mph.


Charlie emerged from the accident with minor injuries, however the boys were seriously injured, the youngest one dying from his injuries. This effectively ended his marriage, and sent Charlie to prison. After serving five years he was ready when an old high school friend suggested that Charlie accompany him to an A.A. meeting.

LOCATION: Dallas, Texas
PERIOD: 2005-2016
DRAMATIS PERSONAE: Louanne Bowden Raney (1967); Rita Daley (1962); Charles Bennett (1963); Ronnie Raney (1962-2001)

GETTING SOBER IN DALLAS
(F. D. Leone, Jr.)

(2015)
Springtime in Highland Park,
The scent of new mown grass.
Every night Louanne comes home drunk;
Her mama’s been on her ass.
“Rita, bourbon rocks, splash of water.”
“Louanne, I done made last call.”
“You do know I been to prison for murder.”
“Hon, you’ve had enough, that’s all.”

Louanne unsteady as she arose
“Girl, tomorrow I’ll get my tab.”
“You sure you can make it home alone?
Why not let me call you a cab?”
“Naw, I’ll get her home, just gimme a minute.”
Louanne turned an’ snarled, “who the hell are you?”
“Lu, hon, you know Charlie; Charlie Bennett.”
“Yeah, okay, Charlie – Charlie who?”

(2005)
Lush green lawns turn to brown;
No rain for weeks, 100 plus degrees.
Ten months back, Charles was let out;
He’s in sweating in bed, alone with his disease.
Thinking about his glory days,
Football star; high school fame.
Texas gave him a full ride to play;
Blew his knee out his third game.

He married his high school sweetheart,
They had two sons in three years.
You can find him every night in a bar,
Replaying each touchdown and how they cheered.
He don’t remember the wreck;
Just his youngest son did not survive.
His marriage ended before his five year stretch;
He’s picking up the pieces of a broken life.

(2015)
The week before Halloween,
Louanne poured her whiskey down the drain.
The day after Thanksgiving,
She picked up a chip for 30 days.
She had found a nearby meeting,
Highland Park Presbyterian.
Louanne hears herself start talking,
“I’m a drunk, my name’s Louanne.”

“Ronnie would drink and then beat me;
For some years I let him.
Then one night I got th’ gun while he was eatin’,
I shot him; should’ve just left him.”
“Spent 12 years in a Mississippi prison,
Til some judge decided to let me go.
Said what I done was within reason;
My grandma’s funeral brought me home.”

(2016)
January morning, cold and raining,
Slowly turning to sleet.
The peace is shattered by a tree limb breakin’;
Louanne hears it from across the street.
Used to be Louanne would sit on the porch,
With a bottle of booze and a stick of pot.
Now the dawn sounds reinforce,
For Louanne the presence of God.

In a booth across from each other;
Louanne and Charlie sit face to face.
Charles has five years sober,
Louanne’s coming up on 90 days.
Two lives intersect,
According to some hidden plan;
Living one day at a time, not the next;
Sober in Dallas, Charlie and Louanne.

© 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.

“Buyin’ Wood in Gwinnett County”

LOCATION: Gwinnett County, Georgia, the foothills of the Georgia Appalachian mountains.
PERIOD: Fall, 2011
DRAMATIS PERSONAE: Wade Wainwright (1975); Ruth Ann Robison (1950); Billy Wainwright (1949);  Charlie Cooper (1974)

Wade Wainwright (1975), son of Ruth Ann Robison and Billy Wainwright, meets Charlie Cooper (1974), son of Keith Cooper (1949-2018) and Mildred Mason (1950). And they fight over the purchase of wood and hay.

The Robison family was from Conyers, Georgia, later Macon; and the Cooper family was from Jackson, Mississippi. Wade Wainwright is the one with the gun and Charlie Cooper is the one trying to buy wood. Charlie was the nephew of Lucy Bess Cooper (1980-2015).

BUYIN’ WOOD IN GWINNETT COUNTY
(F. D. Leone, Jr.)

“Say, Bud, that firewood back there;
Is it yours? Is it up for grabs?
“Fifty dollars a rick; cut this year.”
“For wood that green, seems a lot to ask.”
“Take it or leave it, no difference to me.”
“I might could fit a rick in my truck.”
“Cash in hand; no guarantee.”
“Will you, at least, help me load it up?”

“I will for an extry twenty dollar.”
“Neighbor, I’m just askin’ for some help.”
“You ain’t no kin of mine, as I remember.”
“Well, I guess I’ll load it my own self.
“I could also use a little hay
But, I’m afraid to ask how much a bale.”
“Hunderd dollar; you haul it away.”
“Friend, you must not care to make a sale.”

“Like it or lump it, all the same to me;
No one asked you to come here a-lookin'”
“No need for you to get so uppidy;
I’m startin’ to think you’re a little crooked.”
“On second thought, I won’t need that wood.”
“Suit yourself, it’s fine where it is.”
“I’ll be damned, you ain’t no good”
“Friend, you don’t want none of this.”

“Hold on, why’d you pull a gun?”
“Get down the road if you know what’s best.”
“Okay, okay, I’m leavin’, I’m done.”
“You goddam asshole, here’s a load of lead.”
“Shit, you shot me in the butt;
I’m bleedin’, oh God – I was just askin’!”
“You better keep your mouth shut;
Get off my land; you’re trepassin’.”

Jumped in my truck, tore out of there;
Got a good mind to take him to the law.
Ain’t no point goin’ to the sherf,
I don’t know nothin’ ’bout him at all.
He’s prob’ly picked up ‘n’ left
That prob’ly wasn’t even his wood.
Guys like him don’t make no sense
I need a doctor, he shot me good.

© 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.

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, 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

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

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

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

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

© 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.

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

© 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.

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

© 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.

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

Related songs:

Louanne in Vicksburg
When Louanne Met Lucy in Prison

“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”

© 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.

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

© 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.

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

© 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.

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

© 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.

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.

© 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.

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

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

© 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.

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 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 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.

© 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