Desperadoes Waiting For A Train

(album: Other Voices, Too (A Trip Back To Bountiful) - 1998)

I'd play the Red River Valley
And he'd sit out in the kitchen and cry
And run his fingers through seventy years of living
And wonder, "Lord, has ever' well I've drilled run dry?"

We were friends, me and this old man
Like desperados waiting for a train
Like desperados waiting for a train

He's a drifter and a driller of oil wells
And an old school man of the world
He let me drive his car
When he's 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 were old men with beer guts and dominos
Lying 'bout their lives while they'd played

And I was just a kid
They all called his "Sidekick"
Like desperados waiting for a train
Like desperados waiting for a train

One day I looked up and he's pushing eighty
And there's brown tobacco stains all down his chin
To me he's one of the heroes 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
Like desperados waiting for a train

A day before he died, I went to see him
I was grown and he was almost gone
So we just closed our eyes and dreamed us up a kitchen
And sang another verse to that old song
"Come on, Jack, that son of a guns are comin'"

Like desperados waiting for a train
Like desperados waiting for a train
Like desperados waiting for a train
Like desperados waiting for a train