It took 5 metropolitan airports to bring my mom, dad, sister and me with our kids - 3 generations - together for our first family vacation together in years. Our ears were still ringing as we untangled the ropy wrangle of roadway out of San Antonio and into the Hill Country. where, after 3 days of seeing what the guidebook said we had to see, my sister finally persuaded us to hit the sticks off Ranch Road 1376 until our rental cars rocked to a stop in a gravel lot beside a weathered shack in a thick shade made famous in that country song called Luckenbach, Texas.
At most, a ghost of a ghost of a ghost town, a stable of well broke picnic tables,a platform stage, and a dance hall patched with tin..it wasn't much but as the road sign said it was good enough for anybody to be Somebody in.
We sat down. The kids ran around. We found us 4 Shiner Bocks at the bar in the rear of the shack where some white-haired boys were picking the Atkins, Robbins and Ritter out of their Fenders, Gibsons and Taylors. We could almost feel the pegs untwisting the tensions in our shoulders. We started dropping g's from our i-n-g's. You are here, said our inner locators - right here. Something earthen was in the air. My sister pushed her sunglasses up into her hair and grinned at me like I was her brother. And Brother, I don't care how slick you are, there's a hick in you somewhere,some folkie in a tie-dyed T. You don't belong in your dead end job any more than we belonged in that dead end town. but we pick our dead ends in the end, don't we my friend?
My mom and dad don't farm anymore; my sister manages info-tech. As for me, I live in a city, a pitch man for the rich man, a fast -track flack. Only recently have I begun to let my small- town farm roots show. I've been a fool.
As our cars ticked cool under Luckenbach's moon in the crazy calm of that afternoon, the rooster's crowed, the whole hollow glowed in a sepia haze.. it seemed our ghosts, at last restored, out amongst the ghosts of that ghost town poured, and, hitching up their things, got down to the dizzying business of two- stepping up the fence-posted venue, and around and down through leaves past the washer pitching pits to the creek, cheek to cheek, to the music ghosts love most -
And now I can say it like I knew it all along; That crick in your neck is the heck you've got from being Somebody you're not. But that's ok, 'cause as the old folks say: Somewhere they are playing your song
At most, a ghost of a ghost of a ghost town, a stable of well broke picnic tables,a platform stage, and a dance hall patched with tin..it wasn't much but as the road sign said it was good enough for anybody to be Somebody in.
We sat down. The kids ran around. We found us 4 Shiner Bocks at the bar in the rear of the shack where some white-haired boys were picking the Atkins, Robbins and Ritter out of their Fenders, Gibsons and Taylors. We could almost feel the pegs untwisting the tensions in our shoulders. We started dropping g's from our i-n-g's. You are here, said our inner locators - right here. Something earthen was in the air. My sister pushed her sunglasses up into her hair and grinned at me like I was her brother. And Brother, I don't care how slick you are, there's a hick in you somewhere,some folkie in a tie-dyed T. You don't belong in your dead end job any more than we belonged in that dead end town. but we pick our dead ends in the end, don't we my friend?
My mom and dad don't farm anymore; my sister manages info-tech. As for me, I live in a city, a pitch man for the rich man, a fast -track flack. Only recently have I begun to let my small- town farm roots show. I've been a fool.
As our cars ticked cool under Luckenbach's moon in the crazy calm of that afternoon, the rooster's crowed, the whole hollow glowed in a sepia haze.. it seemed our ghosts, at last restored, out amongst the ghosts of that ghost town poured, and, hitching up their things, got down to the dizzying business of two- stepping up the fence-posted venue, and around and down through leaves past the washer pitching pits to the creek, cheek to cheek, to the music ghosts love most -
And now I can say it like I knew it all along; That crick in your neck is the heck you've got from being Somebody you're not. But that's ok, 'cause as the old folks say: Somewhere they are playing your song
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