LOCATION: North Louisiana: Hosston, Springhill, Coushatta, Powhattan
PERIOD: 1990s
DRAMATIS PERSONAE: Tullison “Tully” Tate (1965-2013); Rosalie Broussard (1967); Sonny Tate (1936-1980)
Tully’s father was country singer Sonny Tate. Tully married Rosalie Broussard (born Vivian, LA; father, Mike “Sarge” Broussard) who was an unstable woman and runs off repeatedly from the family home. Initially after his marriage Tully and Rosalie lived in Mobile, Alabama but then they moved with their twin girls to Hosston, Louisiana. There he works at the Springhill pulp paper mill driving a timber truck and reconnects with his boyhood friends the Broussard and Thibodaux families.
Tully is a decent, hard-working, family man but who also likes to drink and party on occasion. His primary worry in life is his wife, Rosalie, who will disappear from time to time, leaving the twins unsupervised. For a while, Tully would track her down and bring her back home until, finally, he gives up and let’s her go.
Although his job in Springhill ended when they shut down the paper mill, he and his girls remained in Hosston until his death in 2013 after a short illness.
HOSSTON TO BASTROP
(F. D. Leone, Jr.)
I used to make my living driving a log truck
Hauling timber for the pulp paper mill
Take Highway 2, Hosston to Bastrop
Double back and unload at Springhill
The paper mill shut down, jobs all dried up
That stink it made, naw we sure don’t miss
Hear they gonna bring in a cross tie plant
Now we can smell them creosote pits
A case of beer on a Friday night
Fill a washtub with boiled shrimp and ice
We sure like get drunk and try to dance
We may be way up north but it’s still Louisian’
Gets real hot ’round here in the summer
August heat will melt the asphalt
Didn’t even hurt Randy Butcher when he got run’d over
His head was hard, the road was soft
A case of beer on a Friday night
Fill a washtub with boiled shrimp and ice
We sure like get drunk and try to dance
We may be way up north but it’s still Louisian’
Like to take my truck out One-Fifty-Seven
Stop at the Shongaloo Dairy Cup
Three-Seventy-One to Coushatta, then One to Powhatan
Just drive around where my daddy grew up
A case of beer on a Friday night
Fill a washtub with boiled shrimp and ice
We sure like get drunk and try to dance
We may be way up north but it’s still Louisian’
Betty Broussard brought her fiddle and bow
Someone gave a washboard to Greg Thibodeaux,
We sure like get drunk and try to dance
We may be way up north but it’s still Louisian’
© 2017 Frank David Leone, Jr./Highway 80 Music (ASCAP). The songs and stories on the Highway 80 Stories website are works of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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