by Bruce Craven Willie Nelson’s band on the road in the early days, with Bush, Day, Nelson & English, rode in a ’47 Flxible Flyer bus. Surly Paul had tooled saddles, racketeered, showed he would learn drums, but still pimping — a Waco bad-ass. The drum secret? “Don’t count”, Willie said, “just feel it.” Paul kept drumming, carried a blade,…
“Pack up all your dishes,
make note of all good wishes…”
sang the Texan, Guy Clark, talking
about leaving Los Angeles for a more simple
life. “Don’t cry now,” he reminded Susanna, love
is a gift, perfect, hand-made. The tune? L.A. Freeway.
Clark got a song-writing contract, left for Nashville.
His L.A. landlord had chopped down a grapefruit tree with deep roots.
I didn’t strike the law, didn’t brawl, but fall, 1980, I did rebel: “No Nukes!” The right kind of coup d’état!
Summer ‘81, I’d break rocks in the hot sun, dig ditches; choose pay-days as my right kind of coup d’état.
After that freshman year, my political rage would fade. I played Ultimate, smoked weed, eyed love,
but at Lawrence-Livermore Labs in 1980, I grabbed at a chance to fight in the right kind of coup d’état.