we stopped there in Seymour, texas, right on the river, and took out our instruments to play a while. it was hot in the car and we needed some fresh air. we'd been travelling and playing, travelling and playing, and when we
needed to sleep we'd pitch the tent and try to get some shut-eye. what i'm
saying is that we were getting sorta ripe as the tour progressed, if you know
what i mean. anyway, as we were playing -- some old hank williams songs i
recall, with billybob working hard on the fiddle, cletis getting all over the
banjo, trixie on mandolin and singing freely, and bruno using the cars hubcaps
for drums -- the state police pulled off the highway to where we were. big
boys, both of 'em, sunglasses on, looking like a couple of former dallas
cowboy offensive linemen. "what y'all doing out here?," they asked. "making
metal frisbees," bruno said, as a joke, holding up one of the hubcaps, "wanna
throw one?" well, as you might guess, these boys in their trooper hats and
shades didn't find the humour in that. they looked at each other, muttered
something, and then told us they'd have to go through our belongings. it took a
while. we had a lot of stuff crammed into the car and trunk that trip. when
they pulled out clete's wig, they were suspicious, but trixie jumped up and
said, "now, please don't be damaging my stage hair, fellas," and they put the
wig back in the duffel bag.
the rest of us kept playing -- i'll be a bachelor till i die was the song -- and one of the troopers nodded just a little. they decided they liked the music and that we weren't worth bothering more than we'd already been bothered. one of the lawmen, lucas was his name, said his brother norman ran a little joint in haskell and they had music on the weekend and that norman might give us a gig for tips and beer. we thanked him for the lead, and they let us go, but asked us to play a little farther off the highway next time so as not to persuade any traffic into the ditch.
we stopped in haskell the next night. it was a little hard to get to, with the roads being in bad shape, but we met norman and he let us play for tips and
beer just like his brother lucas said he might. we made about fourteen bucks,
and got to drink beer with some very friendly smalltown people. most of them
were very friendly with trixie, not quite as friendly with the boys in the band.
we drank a lot of beer and, just before closing time in walked lucas and his
wife, loreen, who must've weighed fifty pounds more than lucas. they wanted
us to play a waltz, so we made one up, 'cause we don't know any. ol' buddy
sang his ass off on that one, and bruno sat out, not sure what to do on the slow
ones. loreen got friendly with cletis, and toward the very end, when lucas went
for a leak, loreen gave cletis a big hug. that was the last we seen of clete for a
while. when she opened her arms again he looked like a twisted up piece of
beef jerky someone had dropped on the floor.
we wrote the tune down once we were back on the road, bruno driving, and fixed the words so the waltz was a dedication to otis and danny-lee's baby boy. we called it Seymour's Waltz... and we've used it toward the end of the last set ever since