Desperados Waitin’ For a Train Guy Clark
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I played the Red River Valley
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He’d sit in the kitchen and cry
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Run his fingers through seventy years of livin’
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«I wonder, Lord, has every well I’ve drilled gone dry?»
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We were friends, me and this old man
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Like two desperados waitin’ for a train
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Two desperados waitin’ for a train
He was a drifter, a driller of oil wells
A teacher, a schoolman of the world
Taught me how to drive his car when he was too drunk to
He’d wink and give me money for the girls
And our lives were like, well, some old Western movie
Like desperados waitin’ for a train
Like desperados waitin’ for a train
Yeah, from the time that I could walk he’d take me with him
To a bar called the Green Frog Cafe
Where old men with beer guts and dominoes
Would lie about their lives while they played
And I was just a kid, they all called me «Sidekick»
Just like desperados waitin’ for a train
Like desperados waitin’ for a train
Well, one day I looked up and he’s pushin’ eighty
Brown tobacco stains all down his chin
To me he was a hero of this country
So what’s he doin’ all dressed up like them old men
Just drinkin’ beer and playin’ Moon and Forty-two
We were desperados waitin’ for a train
Desperados waitin’ for a train
The day before he died I went to see him
I was grown, he, almost gone.
But we closed our eyes and dreamed us up a kitchen
And sang one more verse to that old song
(spoken) Come on, Jack, that son-of-a-bitch is comin’
Desperados waitin’ for a train
Desperados waitin’ for a train.