I always knew that you would take yourself far from home as
soon as, as far as you could go. By the 1/4 inch cut of your hair and
the Army issue green, for the past eight weeks I can tell where you've
been. For I knew, I could see, it was all cut and dried to me there
was soldier's blue blood streaming inside your veins. There is a world
outside of this room and when you meet it promise me you won't meet it
with your gun.
So now you are one of the brave few, it's awful sad we need
boys like you. I hope the day never comes for "Here's your live round
son. Stock and barrel, saftey, trigger, here's your gun." Well I
knew, I could see, it was all cut and dried to me there was soldiers
blue blood streaming inside your veins. There is a world outside of
this room and when you meet it promise me you won't meet it with your
gun taking aim. For I don't mean to argue, they've made a decent boy
of you and I don't mean to spoil yourhome coming, but baby brother
you should expect me to.
"Stock and barrel, saftey, trigger, here's your gun." So now
does your heart pitter pat with a patriotic sond when you see the
stripes of Old Glory waving? Well I knew, I could see, it was all cut
and dried to me there was soldier's blue blood streaming inside your
veins. There is a world outside of this room and when you meet it
promise me you won't meet it with your gun taking aim. I don't mean
to argue, they've made a decent boy of you and I don't mean to spoil
your homecoming my baby brother Jude and I don't mean toh urt you by
saying this again, they're so good at making soldiers but they're not
so good at making men.
[ Spoken intro from: Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey (byLillian Schlissel) ]
"While the young folks were having their good times
some of the mothers were giving birth to their babies.
Three babies were born in our company that summer.
My cousin, Emily, gave birth to a son in Utah,
forty miles north of the Great Salt Lake one morning.
But the next morning she traveled on
'til noon when a stop was made and another child was born,
this time Susan Mollmeyer.
And gave the baby the name Alice Nevada."
Follow the typical signs, the hand-painted lines, down prairieroads.
Pass the lone church spire.
Pass the talking wire from where to who knows?
There's no way to divide the beauty of the sky from the wildwestern plains.
Where a man could drift, in legendary myth, by roaming overspaces.
The land was free and the price was right.
Dakota on the wall is a white-robed woman, broad yet maidenly.
Such power in her hand as she hails the wagon man's family.
I see Indians that crawl through this mural that recalls ourhistory.
Who were the homestead wives?
Who were the gold rush brides?
Does anybody know?
Do their works survive their yellow fever lives in the pages theywrote?
The land was free, yet it cost their lives.
In miner's lust for gold, a family's house was bought and sold,piece by piece.
A widow staked her claim on a dollar and his name, sopainfully.
In letters mailed back home her Eastern sisters
they would moan as they would read accounts of
madness, childbirth, loneliness and grief.
