The Hooligans

I was one of the family, still am

Everyone called us the Hooligans

Maybe it was our real surname, guess it works

There were a lot of us, and poor as dust

That one was the summer of ’58, we lived

Perched up by the side of the big mountain

The sun shone on that mountain nearly every day

Making it stand out real pretty

All us kids and gung-ho Dad, we kept building our shack

Every so often we’d go out and salvage,

Pirate away any loose boards, bricks

New or used, we just carted it off

I can still see all the little feet like a caterpillar’s

Walking under the long planks, stacked with bricks

Little feet all carrying our new room, new roof, like new Hope

Little by little, we were gonna get there

That last so-hot day we did that, all the little feet stopped

There was a rumble away across the dry yellow canyon

We could see the town tucked up on the distant side there

And then came the chunks of mountain, twinkling oddly in the golden sun as they fell

At first we kids thought it was so pretty, but what?!?

Then the whole side of that mountain caved as we watched

We knew the spot where Mama stood cooking, our little Hooligan house

The whole town was buried in that slow sun-glinting movie minute

Then a lone pick-em-up, musta been, driving straight through that last wrecked road

Dust boiling up behind is what we saw, it was a miracle, running fast

A lone life, saving itself, getting the Hell outa Dodge

We watched, and one of us middlin’ kids started cheering

That was the day.  Now I am old, and here to tell the story

Today I live in a legal-built house, it’s real nice

Some of those little feet from so long ago still come to visit

Our happy-go-lucky lives have prospered

As I look back I wonder what it all stood for, what it meant

Why it happened that way, so sudden, almost business-like, then so very gone…

Well, I aim to live well, honor Mama, not ponder too much that deadly twist.

I lived, the sun still glints off my roof, these trees, my visions….