Dallas, at last, ‘Jewel of the South’. I’d heard a lot of good things about it. Not just on this particular trip, but always as a regular topic of conversation among friends and neighbors. “Y’all come back now, hear?” How funny it all sounded to my northern palette, and yet it haunted me, as it’s done for a long time.
Music was drifting out of the back room… a tiny place, bead curtains, more friends and acoustic guitars. So this is Dallas.
Green apples make the tree hang down
Another apple on the ground
A bushel bag of apple seeds
More than you’ll ever need
You can have yourself an apple tree
Hmm… memories of home, easily the first time in four years I’d thought about such things. That all seemed so far away and long ago, sort of like looking through a tunnel. Here were pieces of my childhood, laid out in song. Who is this prescient soldier of songwriting? If only I had an instrument of some kind, I could see myself at home here, in this foreign land, playing these songs, these vivid stories of life and humanity, to anyone who will listen.