Desperados Waiting For A Train

(album: ¡Viva Terlingua! - 1973)

I played the Red River Valley
He'd sit in the kitchen and cry
Run his fingers through seventy years of living
"I wonder, Lord, has every well I've drilled gone dry?"
We were friends, me and this old man
Like desperados waiting for a train
Desperados waiting for a train

He's a drifter, a driller of oil wells
He's an old school man of the world
Taught me how to drive his car when he was too drunk to
And he'd wink and give me money for the girls
And our lives were like, some old Western movie
Like desperados waiting for a train
Like desperados waiting for a train

From the time that I could walk he'd take me with him
To a bar called the Green Frog Cafe
There was old men with beer guts and dominoes
Lying 'bout their lives while they played
I was just a kid, they all called me "Sidekick"
Just like desperados waiting for a train
Like desperados waiting for a train

One day I looked up and he's pushing eighty
He's got brown tobacco stains all down his chin
To me he was a hero of this country
So why's he all dressed up like them old men
Drinking beer and playing Moon and Forty-two
Like desperados waiting for a train
Desperados waiting for a train

The day before he died I went to see him
I was grown and he was almost gone
So we closed our eyes and dreamed us up a kitchen
And sang one more verse to that old song
Come on, Jack, that son-of-a-bitch is coming

Desperados waiting for a train
Desperados waiting for a train