In ten years of racing, I pulled one hole shot. For me, the biggest thrill was passing the guy in front of me. It didn’t matter if he was in first or twenty-first place.
As I looked at the gloom of the foreboding doom, I took on quite a fright,
The day grew dark and it made me hark, it’s like as if it were night.
The clouds were boiling like a river roiling, and it gave me such a chill,
As the heavens rolled the air turned cold, and I began to lose my will.
The thunder cracked as the Gods attacked, and lightning lit up my way.
As I hurried along I feared it was wrong, to be on this trail today.
The wind picked up like an overfilled cup, and I struggled to keep on the path,
Then came the rain it roared like a train, making me feel God’s wrath.
Soaked to the bone I ain’t got a phone, and the mud is grabbing my boots.
Water dribble in my eye as rain pours from the sky, not a day for seersucker suits.
A trickle flows in mid the awful din, and soon it is joined by another,
It’s up to my ankles as it so rankles, as somewhere else I’d druther.
The wash starts to roar as the heavens they pour, got me regretting my sin,
The thunder booms louder I’m no more a doubter, Lord forget where I’ve been.
Then quick as it started the skies are soon parted, sun shining brightly and gay.
Dripping and shaking my spirit not breaking, I thank the Lord for this day.
LDT July 31, ‘21
I have always admired the rhyming scheme of used by the Bard of the Yukon, Robert Service, in famous poems like The Shooting of Dan McGrew. This is my attempt to emulate his style.
The women and the kids, won’t never tell the tale,
And Iron County’s Saints won’t never see no jail.
The cover-up is startin’, no one says a word,
Bones on Hamblin’s Ranch are scattered by the herd.
There’s gotta be some justice, someone’s gotta’ pay,
The Brethren do decide, that Lee is in the way.
Banished to the ferry on the Arizona Strip,
And if he’s charged, he’s never, ever gonna’ flip.
And back in Salt Lake City, there sits Brother B.
“No, it wasn’t me,” he points to John D. Lee.
Feds will hold a trial, jurors wont convict,
Then the Prophet issues his secret edict.
The final trial is set, Lee will pay the price,
Mormons on the jury not even thinkin’ twice.
They pull the wagon out, firin’ squad within,
John D. Lee will pay for all that saintly sin.
He looks them in the eye, as the bullets fly,
And everyone knows why John D. Lee must die.
LDT July 28, ‘21
In September of 1857, a wagon train from Arkansas was ambushed by Mormon militia and their Native American allies at a place called Mountain Meadows in Southern Utah. The members of the train were persuaded to relinquish their arms and march to safety under escort. Upon Major Higbee’s command, “Do your duty!” the militia members turned and fired on the men they were paired with. At the same time a band of their Paiute allies attacked the women and older children. About 120 people were killed in the massacre. Nineteen children survived and were taken in by Mormon families. The Mormons were reimbursed for “ransoming” these children from the Indians in 1859.
In recent years the LDS Church has gotten better at examining its history, warts and all.
Some might wonder where I learned to love the music of words. When I was a kid, I found a moldy old book in the garage. It contained poems like this:
THE SHOOTING OF DAN McGREW
A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon;
The kid that handles the music-box was hitting a jag-time tune;
Back of the bar, in a solo game, sat Dangerous Dan McGrew,
And watching his luck was his light-o’-love, the lady that’s known as Lou.
When out of the night, which was fifty below, and into the din and the glare,
There stumbled a miner fresh from the creeks, dog-dirty and loaded for bear.
He looked like a man with a foot in the grave, and scarcely the strength of a louse,
Yet he tilted a poke of dust on the bar, and he called for drinks for the house.
There was none could place the stranger’s face, though we searched ourselves for a clue;
But we drank his health, and the last to drink was Dangerous Dan McGrew.
There’s men that somehow just grip your eyes, and hold them hard like a spell;
And such was he, and he looked to me like a man who had lived in hell;
With a face most hair, and the dreary stare of a dog whose day is done,
As he watered the green stuff in his glass, and the drops fell one by one.
Then I got to figgering who he was, and wondering what he’d do,
And I turned my head—and there watching him was the lady that’s known as Lou.
His eyes went rubbering round the room, and he seemed in a kind of daze,
Till at last that old piano fell in the way of his wandering gaze.
The rag-time kid was having a drink; there was no one else on the stool,
So the stranger stumbles across the room, and flops down there like a fool.
In a buckskin shirt that was glazed with dirt he sat, and I saw him sway;
Then he clutched the keys with his talon hands—my God! but that man could play!
Were you ever out in the Great Alone, when the moon was awful clear,
And the icy mountains hemmed you in with a silence you most could hear;
With only the howl of a timber wolf, and you camped there in the cold,
A half-dead thing in a stark, dead world, clean mad for the muck called gold;
While high overhead, green, yellow, and red, the North Lights swept in bars—
Then you’ve a haunch what the music meant … hunger and night and the stars.
And hunger not of the belly kind, that’s banished with bacon and beans;
But the gnawing hunger of lonely men for a home and all that it means;
For a fireside far from the cares that are, four walls and a roof above;
But oh! so cramful of cosy joy, and crowned with a woman’s love;
A woman dearer than all the world, and true as Heaven is true—
(God! how ghastly she looks through her rouge,—the lady that’s known as Lou.)
Then on a sudden the music changed, so soft that you scarce could hear;
But you felt that your life had been looted clean of all that it once held dear;
That someone had stolen the woman you loved; that her love was a devil’s lie;
That your guts were gone, and the best for you was to crawl away and die. ‘
Twas the crowning cry of a heart’s despair, and it thrilled you through and through—”
I guess I’ll make it a spread misere,” said Dangerous Dan McGrew.
The music almost died away … then it burst like a pent-up flood;
And it seemed to say, “Repay, repay,” and my eyes were blind with blood.
The thought came back of an ancient wrong, and it stung like a frozen lash,
And the lust awoke to kill, to kill … then the music stopped with a crash,
And the stranger turned, and his eyes they burned in a most peculiar way;
In a buckskin shirt that was glazed with dirt he sat, and I saw him sway;
Then his lips went in in a kind of grin, and he spoke, and his voice was calm;
And, “Boys,” says he, “you don’t know me, and none of you care a damn;
But I want to state, and my words are straight, and I’ll bet my poke they’re true,
That one of you is a hound of hell … and that one is Dan McGrew.”
Then I ducked my head, and the lights went out, and two guns blazed in the dark;
And a woman screamed, and the lights went up, and two men lay stiff and stark;
Pitched on his head, and pumped full of lead, was Dangerous Dan McGrew,
While the man from the creeks lay clutched to the breast of the lady that’s known as Lou. These are the simple facts of the case, and I guess I ought to know;
They say that the stranger was crazed with “hooch,” and I’m not denying it’s so.
I’m not so wise as the lawyer guys, but strictly between us two—
The woman that kissed him and–pinched his poke–
was the lady that’s known as Lou.
Collected Verse of Robert W. Service (1930) Available as an Amazon Kindle book for 99 ¢.
From Benton up to Alberta, the whisky road it was,
T’was the perfect trail for them that flaunt the laws.
Eighteen Sixty-Nine, Fort Hamilton they built,
A pint of rotten whisky will cost you a pelt.
Blackfoot, Blood or Piegan, they come on in to trade,
Many with their lives or souls, for the fire water paid.
The tribes were goin’ hungry, traded all that they had,
And when the Small Pox hit, ya’ never saw so bad.
Traders from Fort Benton, poison up the trail,
Marshal Beidler tried to put them all in jail.
They’re wily and they’re mean, and can the law evade,
Hidin’ in a coulee, they’ll never be betrayed.
The Northwest is a far country, run by HBC.
‘til the Commonwealth, it was wild, and it was free.
In the Cypress Hills the evil deed was done,
The wolfers and the traders, killin’ everyone.
Assiniboine death wail is heard in Ottawa,
Gotta’ tame the country, gotta’ bring the law.
In Seventy-Four the Mounties ride in to the land,
Makin’ peace with each and every tribal band.
Macleod finds the Whoop-Up Fort, quickly drives them out,
Alberta will be peaceful, of that there is no doubt.
The trail it will remain, as the country’s fillin’ up,
As merchants like the Powers, prices they markup.
Bullwhackers and the railroad will follow that old trail,
Bootleggers find it useful fer stayin’ outta jail.
Now the trail is gone, the Interstate runs through,
Cruisin’ down the lanes, if only that they knew.
LDT July 24, ‘21
Established by illegal whiskey traders in 1869, the Whoop-Up Trail ran from Fort Benton, Montana to what would become Lethbridge, Alberta. After Mounties shut down the illicit liquor trade, it became a freight route for Bull Trains. Eventually, the railroad from Great Falls would displace Fort Benton as the starting point of the trail. During Prohibition, the trail relived its illegal alcohol past as Canadian booze flowed down it to thirsty Americans. Interstate 15 now carries the traffic North to Canada along the old Whoop-Up Trail.
Outlaws, Outrages and Outright Lies 