Tag: dreams

“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.

Love and Loss During the Gold Rush

The Ballad of Black Jack Kelley and Spooner Magee

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

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

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

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

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

A Day In The Life of Spooner Magee

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sally Ann

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

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

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

L’Maison d’Amour

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

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

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

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

Aftermath

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

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

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

“A Day in the Life of Spooner Magee”

LOCATION: Northwestern Louisiana, between Monroe and Shreveport.
PERIOD: 1879
DRAMATIS PERSONAE: Spooner Magee (1826-1886); Sally Ann Gray (1863-1954); Jack Kelley (1824-1869).

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

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

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

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

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

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF SPOONER MAGEE
(F. D. Leone, Jr.)

“My Lord, Sally, you’re as pretty as th’ sunrise.”
“And you’re older than my father.”
“C’mon, now, I’s just tryin’ to be nice.”
“Old man, don’t even bother.”
Spooner met each day with good cheer;
He had high hopes for this new mornin’.
First stop: the Faded Rose and his first beer,
And flirtin’ with that sweet, young darlin’.
 
It’s been ten years since Jack passed on;
Time has passed, but hardly changed a thing.
Since then Spoon’s walked his path alone,
Haunted by a California dream.
“Before I die I’d like to see the ocean;
Stick my toe in it, if I can.
Most days, it’s hard to just get myself in motion.
Then you had to rub it in, callin’ me ‘ol’ man’.”
 
“Sally gal, you’re bigger than this place
You’re bigger than even Shreveport.
C’mon, Sal, we’ll stage a prison break;
Make a run for the golden western shore.
Won’t be easy gettin’ there, but I’ll find a way;
The last great adventure of my life.”
“Ah, Spooner, careful now, watch what you say.
Here; this one’s on me.  An’ jus’ be quiet.”

“Me an’ Jack almost went in ’49,
Long before you were ever born.
Frisco’s changed a lot since that time;
I’ll buy you a dress like you’ve never worn.
Did your daddy tell you stories about Black Jack?
Oh, he was a rascal for sure.”
“Spooner, oughten you be headin’ back,
It’s time for me to cash out an’ lock the door.”
 
“Jack had a plan to get rich in th’ Gold Rush
Said we’d make a fortune clerkin’ a store.
We never staked the cash, not nearly enough.
One day, he jus’ didn’t talk about it no more.”
“Spooner, that must’ve been more’n thirty years ago;
Wishin’ won’t bring those days back.”
“I know, Sally girl,  I surely know;
But those were the days for me an’ Jack.”
 
“Sally Ann, what’s holdin’ you here?
Except for you, there’s nothin’ for me anymore.
If we started now we’d be there in half a year;
No one from here’s done nothin’ like this before.”
“Spooner, I just might take you up on th’ offer;
Leavin’s all I think about some days.”
Standin’ in the tide knee-deep in salt water;
Sally said, “Spoon, I can’t believe those waves.”

Related songs in chronological order:
“Ballad of Black Jack Kelley and Spooner Magee”
“Sally Ann”
“A Day in the Life of Spooner Magee”
“L’Maison d’Amour”
“Aftermath”

© 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.