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.
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