Desperados Waitin' For A Train

(Caption: My neighbor, retired US Forest Service, Ajo Arizona)

It took me a long time to understand this:

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

One day I looked up and he's pushin' 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.

Drinkin' beer and playin' Moon and Forty-two
Like desperados waitin' for a train
Like desperados waitin' for a train~~~ Jerry Jeff Walker version, 1973)

Let me date myself:

When I was “just a kid” (early 1960’s), my step grandfather (who was in a tank in the Battle of The Bulge), would take me out at sunrise on his small boat to fish the Hudson River out of a tiny cove in Sparta, just south of the Sing Sing prison.

They didn't call it PTSD at the time, but about half of US veterans involved in that tank battle returned to the US with severe trauma.

No stranger to this, my grandmother’s first husband, my genetic grandfather, served in WW I in France. He too came home with severe trauma.

(my grandfather, Charles Peacox, left seated, in France)

Getting back to the Hudson River and my step grandfather.

A few hours after we fished and he sold our abundant catch off the tail gate of this ‘55 Rambler wagon, he’d buy a few 6 packs of Rheingold and ice and we’d go down to the shack by the cove where he’d play cards with the other old men. I was “just a kid”, his “sidekick”.

Year later, my first concert was in 1971, when I saw Jerry Jeff and Commander Codey and His Lost Planet Airmen at the Port Chester Capitol Theater.

I was way too young and wasted to understand what the hell was going on.

I next saw Jerry Jeff at Red Rocks in Colorado in 1976 with Seals And Crofts.

I was not a fan.

To me, these folks were rednecks as far as I was concerned.

Today, as I reflect, my thoughts are completely different.

I spent lots of time in the southwest, including Terlingua, Texas and Big Bend:

And I met many fine people.

I never fought in any military battle. Thankfully, the draft was cancelled in 1973 when I came of age. But 40 years of fighting corporate power and government corruption has taken a similar toll.

So not only do I now understand Jerry Jeff’s music (and I know he didn’t write that song), I’ve become that old man - a “desperado waiting for the train”.