THE GOODNIGHT-LOVING TRAIL

(Bruce Phillips)



Too old to wrangle or ride on the swing,

You beat the triangle and you curse everything.

If dirt was a kingdom, they you'd be the king.



On the Goodnight Trail, on the Loving Trail,

Our Old Woman's lonesome tonight.

Your French harp blows like the low bawling calf.

It's a wonder the wind don't tear off your skin.

Get in there and blow out the light.



With your snake oil and herbs and your liniments, too,

You can do anything that a doctor can do,

Except find a cure for your own god damned stew



CHORUS



The campfire's gone out and the coffee's all gone,

The boys are all up and they're raising the dawn.

You're still sitting there, lost in a song.



CHORUS



I know that some day I'll be just the same,

Wearing an apron instead of a name.

There's nothing can change it, there's no one to blame

For the desert's a book writ in lizards and sage,

Easy to look like an old torn out page,

Faded and cracked with the colors of age.



CHORUS



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Words and music by Bruce (Utah) Phillips

Copyright Strike Music

Recorded by Ed Trickett on The Telling Takes Me Home, FSI-46

and by Harry Belafonte on Homeward Bound

This is a song about the "over the hill" cook on the cattle

drive. The trail had precious little to do with "goodnight" or

with "loving", but the song does. The trail going from Texas,

went through New Mexico and north through Colorado, was named

after an Army officer, Charles Goodnight, and a legendary

cattleman, Oliver Loving, who blazed the trail over 100 years

ago. According to an article in a recent Life magazine, Loving

county in Texas - named after Oliver Loving - is "the most

sparsely populated county in the contiguous United States, 647

square miles with 150 people scattered among 451 producing oil

wells."



The cattle drive on this trail is the frame in which Bruce

portrays the loneliness of the cook, the "Old Woman," who plays

harmonica ("French harp") by himself all night until dawn. He

puts us inside a man who, worn down by years of wrangling, finds

a place to live out his productive days dishing out stew to those

who serve as constant reminders of his past.



It is a loving picture, with the singer understanding the human

consequences of riding herd on the desert for years and, indeed,

anticipating his own aging. At least the worn out old cowboy had

something to look forward to.

@west @cowboy @age

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