Guy Clark

I've been a big fan of Guy Clark ever since I heard his song, "LA Freeway" on (of all things) NPR.
... Adios to all this concrete.
Gonna get me some dirt road back street
If I can just get off of this LA freeway
Without getting killed or caught....

Another song of his, "Desperados waitin' for a train," started to resonate as my uncle got older, and now I have a hard time listening to it:

... I played the Red River Valley 
He'd sit in the kitchen and cry 
Run his fingers through seventy years of livin'...

I was 25 and my uncle was 69 the first time I went to see him. He was living in a small apartment with my aunt and a large dog named Jacque, had $11,000 in credit card debt, a part-time job as a security guard, and was almost completely deaf, but he was family.

... We were friends, me and this old man 
He's an old school man of the world 
And our lives was like some old Western movie 
Like desperados waitin' for a train...

Ok, so Guy Clark is not grammatically correct, but my uncle and I became good friends. After I got him a computer, I think I got an email every day for 10 years, and when he learned how to play Scrabble online he became a monster. Between visiting Dawn's mom and my uncle, that was our two weeks of vacation every year.
 
... One day I looked up and he's pushin' eighty 
He's got brown tobacco stains all down his chin 
Well to me he was a hero of this country 
So why's he all dressed up like them old men...

Thankfully, my uncle stopped smoking before I met him, and he was much too sophisticated to ever chew tobacco. He never dressed like an old man, although his shoes did become more 'comfortable' as the years progressed. He also had a (reasonably) full head of hair when he died, which gives me some hope. He liked to wear shirts that said things like, "In dog years, I'm dead" but since I gave him the shirt, I couldn't complain.

... The day 'fore he died I went to see him 
I was grown and he was almost gone.
So we just closed our eyes and dreamed us up a kitchen 
And sang one more verse to that old song...

I loved my uncle more than I could ever express, but I had to live my own life. After I got divorced, he often suggested I come live with him, and I probably would have if he lived anywhere other than the American South. I wanted him to move to California to be closer to my family, but of course he was too old to change. (In the end, I didn't give him a choice, but he didn't stay very long.)

There are many things that remind me of my uncle, not least of which are four pictures I took from his home and hung in mine; a hat and raincoat he gave me when I moved to England; any jazz music (especially Chris Barber); his WWII medals; Scrabble. But the Guy Clark song seems to sum it up perfectly: 16 years of two people, separated by time and distance, like desperados waiting for a train...