Ghosts


Written by Kirk Hawley

The paper said that Joe Wilson died alone on his ranch in 1929, and his body was found by a stranger riding through Dry Valley.

But Lloyd Holyoak says his folks bought the old Wilson place, and let two of the brothers stay there till they died, and Lloyd saw them carry Joe out dead.

They say Joe was a recluse who lived out his life alone, out there in the desert where there was no one to see his face.

But my cousin Joe Taylor says he remembers seeing a Wilson around town when he was a little boy, an old man with one eye and a hole in his cheek. Well that had to be Joe.

The stories say that Ervin Wilson rode all the way to LaSal chased by an Indian, and somebody drove the Indian off by firing his gun into the air.

But Lloyd Holyoak says he got the story from Ervin himself, and Ervin didn't even go to LaSal the day Joe got shot, he just rode home.

And some of the old stories say that the Moab rescuers had to drive off the Indians when they got up to Pinhook, and some say the Indians were long gone whey they got there.

And my cousin Wendy says she heard Joe Wilson had a girlfriend and was a fine dancer.

And my cousin Joe Taylor says "The stories change in the telling."

CHORUS: The ones who took the sailing ships to somewhere that was new
The ones who crossed muddy Rio Grande
The ones who came from lands that they've forgot or never knew
We're haunted by the ghosts who walk this land.

Whatever happened to Joe Wilson, he's long gone, and everything he ever did and said and thought and saw and felt is gone, and he's barely a fading memory.

And the same with Ervin Wilson, and their brothers Isadore and Alfred up there buried with the others at Pinhook, and their parents AG and Jane, just fading memories.

And the same thing is gonna happen to me, and you, and everyone who walks this earth, all those memories will be gone. And it's a rare one that doesn't deserve to be live.

And these are the people that made things as they are today, that built the world we live in, and caused it to be the way it is, and without them we'd be nothing. And I don't know much about anything if I don't even know where I came from.