Desperadoes Waiting for a Train - Nanci Griffith

I played the Red River Valley

He’d sit in the kitchen and cry

Run his fingers through seventy years of livin'

«I wonder, Lord, has every well I’ve drilled gone dry?»

We were friends, me and this old man

Like desperados waitin' for a train

Desperados waitin' 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 waitin' for a train

Like desperados waitin' 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 waitin' for a train

Like desperados waitin' for a train

One day I looked up and he’s pushin' 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

Drinkin' beer and playin' Moon and Forty-two

Like desperados waitin' for a train

Desperados waitin' 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 comin'

Desperados waitin' for a train

Desperados waitin' for a train.