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COWTOWN 121311 - COWTOWN
James Michael Taylor
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Yeah, there’s an “Indian” graveyard somewhere out there at the Stock Yards.
COWTOWN Key Em
Em C D Em
In a courtyard down the alley there’s a graveyard, weeds and litter
Am Em
Memories undisturbed await their doom beneath the glitter of COWTOWN
Take a building, old and crooked. Long ago the life forsook it
Paint it up and name it. Since nineteen five they claim it lived in COWTOWN
Am
*Where the memories are cheap and they don’t run too deep
B7 C Am
And there’s no sigh on the trail that leads to the graveyard trash and weeds in
(Em) COWTOWN
Take a picture of your daughter up on stage with Texas Water
Dyed feathers, leather halter and the cowboy boots you bought her in COWTOWN
And it’s not ‘cause folks are fickle, they just can’t make one damn nickel
On something they don’t own so they leave it alone in COWTOWN
In a courtyard down the alley there’s a graveyard weeds and litter and
Memories, undisturbed await their doom beneath the litter of COWTOWN…
?
(C) 2010 Royal T Music
James Michael Taylor
said
Tim Tandy This one really grabs me, Jim. I enjoy the "play like" aspect of the Stockyards District today, but I KNOW what was real and what wasn't. When I grew up in East Fort Worth in the 50's thru the 70's, the Stockyards were a working affair. Everyone downwind got the dust and rancid odors that were a mixture of cattle manure, blood and guts, and rendered fat. Get up close, and you added in the panicked sounds of cattle going up the ramps to slaughter. The buildings along E and W Exchange were mostly delapidated flop-houses, and I recall there were usually destitute men in soiled undershirts leaning out the upstairs windows smoking cigarettes and taking it all in. When the slaughterhouses shut down and the development folks took over, they neatly "packed up" the ambience of the historical "Hell's Half Acre" - gambling halls, saloons, cheap hotels, bordello's and the site of gunfights such as the famous Luke Short/Jim Courtright affair - which had been razed in the 60's and replaced with the Water Gardens and Convention Center as an act of "urban renewal", and "relocated" them to the Stockyards. I really don't object to all of it, but just wish they were a bit more open about what's shit and what's Shinola, ya know? All the tourists crowd E Exhange at the appointed hour and hoot and holler and excitedly REAL Wild West every day when the "cattle drive" occurs. Oh, well, as Bruce Willis' character in "Die Hard" liked to say, "Yippi-ki-yay, MF!"
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