Tag: Bowden family

“Jay Cowan Comes of Age”

LOCATION: Longview, Texas
PERIOD: 1974-2025
DRAMATIS PERSONAE: Jasper “Jay” Cowan (1974); Jasper Cowan (1937-2025); Amy Casper (1928-1951); Casper “Cap” Cowan (1951-1988); Hugh Cowan (1925-2001).

Jasper “Jay” Cowan (1974) was haunted his entire life by two things: his father’s suicide and the information told to him by his namesake Jasper Cowan (1937-2025).

Casper Cowan’s mother, Amy Casper (1928-1951), died giving birth to him, causing his father, Hugh Cowan (1925-2001), to resent the innocent child and treat him in monstrous fashion his entire life.  Hugh’s youngest brother, Jasper Cowan (1937-2025), who is Jay Cowan’s namesake and at whose funeral the song begins, recounts the series of events which led to Casper’s suicide.

Jasper witnessed his brother’s abuse of his nephew, culminating with Casper being sent to a sanitarium for alcoholism and given electroshock therapy, which left him mentally unstable, and even worse off than he was as a mere alcoholic.

Eventually, after years of hallucinations and other forms of mental dementia, Casper committed suicide.

Casper’s son, named for his favorite uncle Jasper, is told most of this by his great-uncle the same day of his father’s funeral.  The memory of that funeral came back to Jay at this great-uncle’s funeral and burial.

JAY COWAN COMES OF AGE
(F. D. Leone, Jr.)

We buried Jasper Cowan,
My great-uncle and namesake.
He lived a long good life,
Died in his sleep, at ninety-eight.
I thought of the day,
My daddy was laid in the ground.
Uncle Jasper came around,
And just started talking.
 
“My brother blamed your father,
For your grandma’s death in childbirth,
He never let up on the boy;
Cap got involved with the church.
Your grandpa made fun of him,
His crucifix and rosary beads;
Called him a little prissy priest,
My brother could be a sumbitch.”
 
“He basically disowned his son;
Those doctors he sent Cap to,
Let him deny what he was doing;
It was torture what they put Cap through.
He wasn’t the same after that,
Cap had always been soft,
After those treatments, just lost;
Then we lost him completely.”

“Your father left a note;
I picked it up and put it in my pocket.
The sheriff wouldn’t approve,
But I didn’t want your mama to see it.
It was a lot of Catholic nonsense:
Martyrs and saints,
There was even snakes;
I thought it best to just take it.”
 
I’ve been going to my daddy’s grave,
Spending time with him.
As far as the Cowan’s?
Well, I want nothing to do with them.
But, I’ll visit Uncle Jasper’s too,
And just stand there with them;
I’ll never forget ’em,
Then get busy livin’, not dyin’.

© 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.

“Love in the Afternoon”

LOCATION: Tyler, Texas
PERIOD: 1915-1931
DRAMATIS PERSONAE: Lillian Cobb (1894-1986); Walter Murphy (1889-1966); William MacLachlan (1894-1984)

Lillian Cobb’s marriage to Walter Murphy was not a happy one. It is not surprising since from the outset, Lillian reluctantly married Walter, her father’s choice, while at the time being in love with William MacLachlan, the prospective son-in-law her father would never accept (see song, “The Butterfly of Tyler”).

Walter Murphy was a successful businessman, parlaying his law degree into a series of successful business ventures with some of his clients. He had built a large mansion in Waxahachie, Texas, for his wife and children: Peter his oldest son born in 1917, Nora in 1920 and his youngest Andrew in 1928, following two miscarriages in between the last two.

Walter did not know that his wife Lillian, after ten faithful years, had ultimately been unfaithful to him, with William MacLachlan, with whom she had remained in love since the outset of their marriage.

Things got worse for Walter and Lillian when his fortune was devastated in the Great Depression. With their wealth gone, Lillian and Walter could no longer sustain the fiction of their marriage, and it happened that during one of their many arguments Lillian flung Willy MacLachlan in Walter’s face. They were divorced in 1931, Lillian retaining custody of their three kids.

Lillian and Willy had a small private wedding without delay, but ironically, without the excitement that their illicit affair had produced, the routine of day-to-day married life had the effect of cooling their romance somewhat. However, they remained married since there was always warm affection, and they had two children, in addition to Lillian’s three from her former marriage.

LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON
(F. D. Leone, Jr.)

They’d meet in the house her husband built
But never in her bedroom
She didn’t second-guess, felt no guilt
Love in the afternoon
 
Told herself she’d earned this happiness
She didn’t choose her husband, he was her father’s groom
After ten faithful years she had a dalliance
Love in the afternoon
 
It happened by accident
On one of her trips back home they fell together
Eyebrows were raised, there were comments
But it was no surprise those two were lovers
 
Her marriage had grown cold over the years
The papers were drawn up very soon
Down the road for her it was crystal clear
Love in the afternoon
 
The lovers cast their lot in the marriage game
But sadly the blush was off the bloom
Their life became routine and was not the same
As love in the afternoon
 
It happened by accident
On one of her trips back home they fell together
Eyebrows were raised, there were comments
But it was no surprise those two were lovers
 
They’d meet in the house her husband built
But never in her bedroom
She didn’t second-guess, felt no guilt
Love in the afternoon

© 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.

“Go West”

LOCATION: Big Spring, Texas
PERIOD: 1903
DRAMATIS PERSONAE: John Henry Hardin (1878-1949); “Henry Adams Hardin (1926-2015); John Farley Hardin (1927-2020)

Homer and Virgil Hardin were distant relatives of Louanne Bowden, on her mama’s grandma’s side.   They typified a certain mindset among the American pioneers: ruthless independence and no need for civilization. For a while, the kind of life they desired could still be found by leaving the settled towns and cities and going further west.

GO WEST
(F. D. Leone, Jr.)

John Henry Hardin was an engineer
Railroading for the T&P
He had a good wife and two ornery sons
This would’ve been about nineteen and aught-three

The Hardins come from North Carolina
Alabama, then Texas in eighteen-seventy-nine
They would move on about every ten years
Leaving progress: the lawyers and the bankers behind

And go west, hoping to stay free
Even if it meant a harder life
Go west, hanging on to liberty
Life ain’t worth living otherwise

Homer and Virgil were John Henry’s sons
They were dyed-in-the-wool true Hardins, them two
Stuck there in Big Spring, standing at the tracks
Staring and waiting for the coal train to blow through

Each had a nickel in his pocket
Earned that mornin’ from chopping two cords of wood
When they were younger they’d put ’em on the track
But they been saving their nickels to get out for good

And go west, hoping to stay free
Even if it meant a harder life
Go west, hanging on to liberty
Life ain’t worth living otherwise

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

“Butterfly of Tyler”

LOCATION: Tyler, Texas
PERIOD: 1916-1986
DRAMATIS PERSONAE: Lillian Cobb (1894-1986); Walter Murphy (1889-1966); Peter Cobb Murphy (1917-1999); Helen Haynes Murphy (1947)

In the early decades of the twentieth century, upper class Southern families, in many ways, still lived by a code of behavior that reflected antebellum values.  Young men and women socialized at the frequent balls and dinners held at the large homes among the wealthy Southern families. Lillian Cobb was often the prettiest girl there and enjoyed the attention of most of the eligible young men, who would crowd around her, filling her dance card. She was described by some as a butterfly, flitting from partner to partner.

A vestige of what was a 19th century value system, fathers controlled whom their daughters saw socially and ultimately married.  It was unusual for a daughter in her early twenties, or more likely eighteen or nineteen, to defy her father in her choice for a husband.  Lillian Cobb’s father was no different, and she was a product of a culture which strictly prohibited her from choosing a romantic partner from outside her family’s social strata or someone whose reputation had been seriously tarnished.

In the 1910s and 1920s, prior to the Great Depression, this society was peopled by men who did not inherit their wealth but had grown rich in industry or one of the professions, doctor or lawyer.  This was especially true for East Texas towns such as Tyler, where much of the new wealth came from oil and gas production. But there were still the old money families, and these two classes, the newly rich and the old guard, made up one upper social class.

In the case of Lillian Cobb, she fell in love with the irresponsible but dashing son of a Texas family whose roots went deep, back before statehood.

William MacLachlan was the second oldest son of Andrew MacLachlan, patriarch of an old family whose money derived from huge land holdings and cattle.  Andrew had never allowed drilling on any of his land, considering it a blight on the landscape.  Cattle were living things, warm bodies which you raised from birth and fed and took care of for several years.

Andrew’s son William, Willy his friends called him, was a Romantic youth, whose mind was filled with the poetry of John Keats and Robert Browning, and ideas about manhood coming out of novels of Walter Scott.  He had aspirations to write, himself, and filled composition books with his poetry.  A couple of times Willy bound these poems into folios, adding some ink and watercolor drawings, which he then gave to Lillian as his form of courtship.

Willy had dropped out the University of Texas, living off his family without any clear direction for earning his own way, or plans for the future other than bumming around Europe.  Willy was known to drink copious amounts of whiskey, something else which would not endear him to any of the Tyler aristocracy.

William MacLachlan was just the kind of boy Randolph Cobb, Lillian’s father, would never approve of for his daughter. And he did every thing in his power to thwart any ideas of marriage between his daughter and Willy MacLachlan.

By contrast Walter Murphy was in his final year at University of Texas law school, with a promising future assured.  Lillian might have been in love with the dreamy Willy, but her father knew to whom he was going place his daughter’s hand in marriage.

Lillian Cobb (1894-1986) married Walter Murphy (1889-1966) in 1916, gave birth to Peter Cobb Murphy (1917-1999). Peter C. Murphy was father to Helen Haynes Murphy (1947), Louann Bowden’s mother.

BUTTERFLY OF TYLER
(F. D. Leone, Jr.)

There had been a round of parties
For Lillian Cobb’s upcoming wedding day
She spent the night before crying in her room
That 1916 Saturday in May

A great-aunt on her daddy’s side
Sat with her, they talked the night away
“I’ll tell your father to call this wedding off”
“You mustn’t do that; it’s too late.”

The butterfly of Tyler
Flitting on her careless wings
Young men would crowd beside her
A vision fading into a dream
A vision fading into a dream

Any other girl would have been thrilled
Walter Murphy was the catch of the year
But he was not who Lillian had set her eye
Her father refused the one she held dear

So she cried for the good times that would be no more
For the names that had filled her dance card
For all the twilight parties and the one
Who lives still in her heart

The butterfly of Tyler
Flitting on her careless wings
Young men would crowd beside her
A vision fading into a dream
A vision fading into a dream

© 2020 Frank David Leone, Jr./Highway 80 Music (ASCAP). The songs and stories on the Highway 80 Stories website are works of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

“I Didn’t Know What Else To Do”

LOCATION: Texas
PERIOD: 1856-1888
DRAMATIS PERSONAE: Jedadiah Phelps (1856-1888?); Nellie Phelps (1855-1922)

Jed Phelps was the younger brother of Nellie Phelps, the grandmother of Earl Bowden’s maternal grandmother.  Earl Bowden was Louanne Bowden’s father, which makes Jed Phelps her great-great-great-granduncle.

By the time Jed was six he’d lost his older brother Burch and his mother.  Ten years later his father died leaving his sister and him alone on the family farm in Tennessee.  Nellie married Robert Dorsey the son of a wealthy Texas rancher when she was 17, in 1873.  Dorsey brought Nellie and Jed with him back to his family’s Texas ranch, which was rather large.  Dorsey land stretched between what would become the future cities of Monahans and Abilene.

Abilene was established by cattlemen such as Charles Dorsey, Bob’s father, as a stock shipping point on the Texas and Pacific Railway in 1881. Monahans grew up around a deep water well dug a few years later when the railroad surveyors discovered that the lack of water for the laying crew and their animals would slow down construction of the rail.  Monahans’ digging of a water well produced an abundance of good water and the town would thrive.

Jed was a disgruntled young man, at sixteen he didn’t much like being bossed around by Bob Dorsey.  Having an active imagination Jed dreamed of joining the Texas Rangers whose fame of heroic deeds fighting the Indians and Mexicans he’d heard all about in the bunkhouse.  And so, that’s what he did as soon as he turned nineteen.

But by then the Indians had been run off and the Mexicans no longer posed much of a threat.  Mainly the Rangers were a mercenary band supporting the ranchers whose barbed wire fences were an obstacle for the old cattle drovers accustomed to driving their herds north unobstructed.

There had been a fence war raging between the cattlemen taking large herds across Texas to places like Kansas City and the ranchers who tried to preserve the integrity of their ranches.  This conflict eventually petered out when the railroad was completed since it made no sense to drive the herds north when they could much easier be loaded onto a train.

Disenchanted with this life, in 1888 Jed decided to return to Tennessee and the family  farm to see what was there.  More disappointment awaited him, and so he rode off again, never to be heard from again (see song “A Rusted Plow“).

I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT ELSE TO DO
(F. D. Leone, Jr.)

Got the lantern, walked out to the barn
Raised the axe, split a log in two
Much as I hated splitin’ wood
I didn’t know what else to do
 
Wasn’t that long ago that Pa could lift
Hunderd pound sack under each arm
He looked tiny now under all those quilts
Still, Nellie couldn’t keep him warm
 
Was about six when we lost Burch
Can’t hardly see his face at all
Ma went to bed and never got back up
Now ten years later, looks like it’s Pa
 
The torn wood smelled green and sour
I started feelin’ pretty loose and relaxed
I’m sixteen and figure it’ll fall to me
Even if he got better Pa won’t ever be back
 
I looked up, Nellie was on the porch
Asked her, “How’s he?” She said, “Pa’s dead.”
We buried Pa next to Ma and Burch
I found a field stone and set it at th’ head
 
I swung the axe it stuck in the wood
Raised it again split that log in two
We had plenty wood already in the shed
I didn’t know what else to do

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

“A Rusted Plow”

LOCATION: Texas
PERIOD: 1872-1888
DRAMATIS PERSONAE: Jethro “Jed” Phelps (1856-1888, 32); Nellie Phelps (1855-1922, 67); William Phelps (1834-1872); Martha Massey (1835-1862)

Jed Phelps describes life after his Pa died: His sister Nellie marries a Texas rancher who brings them all to his ranch and puts sixteen year old Jed to work. However, after a few years Jed doesn’t take to ranchin’. He’d heard heroic stories about the Texas Rangers and joins up. When that isn’t all he dreamed it’d be, he decides to go back to their farm in Tennessee only to find something less than he expected.

His family never jnew what happened to Jed, whether he died, or just never came home or even contacted them.

A RUSTED PLOW
(F. D. Leone, Jr.)

After Pa died Nellie married Bob Dorsey
Brought us to Texas to the biggest ranch I seen
Had me punchin’ cows and breakin’ horses
So I joined the Rangers when I turned nineteen
I’d heard about the Indian Wars
But by then the Kiowa were off the plains
We were so good they don’t need us no more
‘Cept to chase off a few fence cuttin’ gangs

Things ain’t how I want to remember
The truth ain’ what I want to hear
I gotta leave the past behind, it’s better
Than seein’ what’s waitin’ for me there

1888 I went back to Tennessee
Wondered how the ol’ homestead looked now
Rode for a week and what greeted me
Was a crow sittin’ on a rusted plow
I found the block where I split wood
The barn was all but fallin’ down
Squattin’ on my heels, chewin’ a cheroot
Thinkin’ how Pa had been so proud

Things ain’t how I want to remember
The truth ain’ what I want to hear
I gotta leave the past behind, it’s better
Than seein’ what’s waitin’ for me there

Went around back, found those graves
Cleaned them up straightened the stones
A part of me kinda wished we had stayed
But I can’t get back what’s long gone
Spose I got what I came for
It’s sure all that’s here to be found
I’ll ride away come back no more
Not for any crow sittin’ on a rusted plow
I’ll ride away come back no more
Not for no crow sittin’ on a rusted plow

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

“Casper Cowan”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

© 2025 Frank David Leone, Jr./Highway 80 Music (ASCAP). The songs and stories on the Highway 80 Stories website are works of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

“Them Hardin Boys”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

© 2025 Frank David Leone, Jr./Highway 80 Music (ASCAP). The songs and stories on the Highway 80 Stories website are works of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

“Homer and April, Virgil and June”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

© 2025 Frank David Leone, Jr./Highway 80 Music (ASCAP). The songs and stories on the Highway 80 Stories website are works of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

“From Burden to Bowden”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

© 2025 Frank David Leone, Jr./Highway 80 Music (ASCAP). The songs and stories on the Highway 80 Stories website are works of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.