Got the Blues?

Dark was the night, cold was the ground that led me to you. Both of us huddled in a single sleeping bag, knowing this train was supposed to be here almost an hour ago. She fell asleep in it and wouldn’t wake up when it came, but I had to get out of town. Just had to…there was a hellhound on my tail, fixin’ to put me in a cage.

At a crossroad, I reluctantly but resolutely stumbled across the yard and made my ascent and watched her fade into the distant cold as I took cover from the wind. This was it…my last trip across the open country to wherever I’d call my home next, but then I was done. No more smokestack lightnin’, and no more moonshine breakfast to stay warm. And no more lady, sick from the ball and chain of the opium she’d fallen in love with.

See, rollin & tumblin across the open plane across the northern Midwest some weeks before, I had come to realize that baby was born under a bad sign…for sure…devil got my woman, and he was feedin’ her the bad shit.

So I took my chance. And you would’ve, too. When I got into town, I realized that nobody knows you when you’re down and out. Hard times, from door to door, I stepped across town wondering how many more years I’d feel that this life was a cryin’ shame. And cry I did.

I had trouble in mind, but as the song goes - I wouldn’t have trouble always. About a month or so later a kind gentleman from a side of town I’d rarely have seen stepped over to me one day as I was playin’ my guitar on the side of a five and dime. He asked me if I’d ever held a steady job as an entertainer. I looked up and said, “Not yet, kind sir…Let the good times roll”.

A week later, I was off the drink and in the backroom of this gentleman’s laundry house, where he had a blind pig that cats would swarm to like bumble bees. For five long years I played in that speakeasy, and never for a second thought twice about regretting my newfound sobriety.

Then, one day, a very stunning woman stepped in and I was so taken aback I had nothing to do but stop playing.

She had something familiar about her…those green eyes and long black hair, without the gnarls one is gifted from having a cold, hard ground as your home.

Could it be?

It was!

And so it came to be, I was reconnected with my lady from the train yard back east. I was afraid she would ask me why I left her that day, but after many years I finally had to bring it up myself.

“I had to stop breakin’ down…you were the last person that gave two about me, and when you left I’d realized I had to turn it around. Was the lord that brought me here, and I’d be a fool to deny that.”

And the rest of the story, I can’t tell ya, in case there’s children around. But you bet your very everything that I never let that woman leave my side again. Never got caught up in anything, either.

And I’m so glad I left her.

I’d leave her again, too, if I had to…because I love her so deeply.

Now…we just had our seventh son. Happy as a lark and healthy as can be!

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