When The Blues Was Dues- A Short Song For Woody- “Ashes Strewn On The Sea”

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman:

…he came out of the prairies like the fire that was an ever present threat, like the wind that came howling of the Dakotas, came howling showing no mercy no mercy recognized by humankind, no mercy as it blew a generation or two’s sinewy, sweaty hard labor across the land like so many sticks.. And like the wind no prairie could hold him long, hold him from the doing he planned to be doing, planned to be making, hell, planned, just planned. So if anybody asks you, or worse, anybody tries to tell you that his plainsong adventure was all ad lib, was put together helter-skelter with scissors and paste (real scissors and paste for those too young to remember such ancient ways of fitting a thing up, making it right against mankind imperfections, or maybe were too young to remember him except through parents, or grandparents ,or now maybe even ancient thickset, hard of hearing angel great-grandparents) , all mirrors and mirages like some snake oil salesman or carny barker, don’t believe them, just don’t.

Yah, like the wind he roamed out of those okie cowboy hills, all threadbare, all morning dust, all noon dust, all evening dust, all dust broke, all dust finished, and like a million okies before him he lit out for the angel-infested west and more space (east, east then had no appeal, had no sex appeal for him but was like some worked- out barren mine, a place to pass by, or die in. Only later, sickness later, did he head east, and had people following him east too), mountains, canyons, arroyos, rios strewn every which way, then to the flatlands past the Sierras on down to the sea, the pacific sea, the big swirl white foamed, white-capped sea, land’s end. And there in the valley camps, there in the wicked miserable okie/arkie/ bracero fields, sweated, back-breaking labor not fit for man nor woman (although not as miserable as those played-out barren okie fields, now bank repossessed, repossessed forever ) he got his voice. Got the rhythm of his people not turning back (where would they go, and why, why with all hell playing out on those dusty prairies), of taking one final land’s end stand before Jehovah himself. And he sang like some latter-day poet Whitman, and they listened, listened to their okie bard, as he sang of their trials and tribulations, and maybe his own.

Oh yah, as if anybody would let me forget, sure he loved women, jesus, everybody wants to know about that even if they can’t remember the complete lyrics to his plainsong, except may This Land Is Your Land, loved every woman who gave him an eye, a shy eye, a bold eye, maybe even one-eye but that look, or maybe just the thought of that look, got him into many a bed, wedded bed mate (she wedded) or not. Until, until he got that okie dust feeling, that old Tom Joad, Dove Linkhorn feeling that possessed his kind, that eternal moving on down the line feeling when thing started crashing in on him, or maybe she thought twice about leaving Hank, or Jimmy, or Bill when he, seeing another eye cast his way, a shy, eye, a bold eye, maybe even one-eye, caught the glance and saved him the bother of sneaking out that third floor back window, half naked, rucksack in hand, and catching that Southern Pacific to parts unknown, yah, to parts unknown and a fresh start, as long as he could get that okie dust out of his throat and some pacific waters, foam-flecked, white-capped to wash him clean.

And then, well then, roaming and bumming, and bumming and roaming (and smoking and drinking and whoring, alright) took their toll, he lost his voice, not the physical voice but that voice that drove his plainsong, and he took to bed, took himself back east (that east that had no sex appeal, that was to be passed by, or was a place to die), and he collapsed in on himself, turned to a monster of himself before the end, the feeble end. But just before then, just that minute when that lost voice was ready to give out for good, he asked, no he begged, no he ordered, no he commanded, in one last fit of okie hubris that under no conditions, was he to be buried out in that throat-clogging okie wasteland. Nah, just throw his silly (his term) ashes over some blue-green high-flying, white wave ocean and be done with it…