Will Dudley: Home

I finished a B.A. in English in December of 2008. Now I'm working toward a Master's. It's a goal I intend to achieve, and a lot of fun when you're almost sixty and no one's expecting it from you. It's the expectations that kill me every time. Somebody says "You should have done it 30 years ago," and I say "Says who?" and I don't say it sweetly.

I was over in Brown's Diner last January and a man said... "Well I'll be... Billy... Billy Dudley... there's somebody I hoped I'd never see again..." and the words kind of trailed off as he rounded the bar, walked past the folk singer drinking her beer and stuck out his hand to say hello in a most disrespectful manner. I didn't offer to buy him a burger. He's as transparent as glass, so it's not hard to see how he could have mistaken me for a friend, or a fool. Fortunately, he didn't stay long.

I've been busy living my life. I can dodge responsibility with the best of them, but I like learning. I know why I go fishing and would rather sing than dig a ditch or work at the feed lot. It's because I can. Because I can make money from God's little gift, I don't have to teach a bunch of screaming rug rats the grade school manners they should have learned at home when they were two.

Yeah, I'm a cowboy singer, and I don't always smile when I should, but I make up for it by caring when I shouldn't and trying not to stay too long, a lesson we could all learn better.

I even have poetry published in genuine bound books that gather dust in libraries here in Colorado and maybe a few other exotic places. I've recorded six CD's and I'm on to my seventh as soon as I clean up my business, which I've ignored since 2006, when I realized that life's so completely freaking complicated that I'll NEEEEEEEVER get it right. My revelation drove me into depression and hibernation, then back into education and society. I don't like people much for the cruel ways of the world, but I love people for their singular kindnesses and acts of mercy. I think we're a lot like horses, only not so nice. I mean, we herd up, or live in towns and cities, for the most part. I don't herd up so well.

I'm living alone this week. It's so nice to wake up alone and not have to pretend that my heart isn't as cold as the marble under these mountains as I'm making flapjacks for myself and no one else.

This summer is a flat one for the dude ranch business with a few exceptions. The families that work hardest and sustain that optimistic outlook necessary for public relations do the best. Their guests return most often, their wranglers and staff seem pretty happy overall. Becky's off from the Rainbow, she's going to be an assistant basketball something over in Illinois, and Sara Jo's getting off the horse and going back to Texas to be the most beautiful girl at Abilene Christian. I haven't seen Meris or Jessica in a few years, I hope things are well with them in New Mexico. I see these kids coming to the dude ranches in Colorado and growing up as they show up once a year for a week from Philadelphia and Boston and Chicago and Jacksonville with their parents and have the kind of fun most city kids only get to dream about. In 2000 and in 2001, the North Fork Wranglers were Alissa, Meredith and Meghan. In 2010 the staff is Tiff, Callie and Hayley. For ten years, I've been singing for college students and vacationers to Colorado from all over the globe. The passage of time in these mountains by me has gone almost unnoticed, but my hair isn't blond any more, it's white, what there is of it. When I first came here I slept on a friend's floor until I found the home I bought. The Sergeant was dead, ma was being mistreated by my evil sister in the only state that allows such ignorance, South Carolina, and my younger brother was living north of Australia somewhere.

I have friends and so called friends who work too hard, try too hard, worry too much and sleep too little. I don't want to do that; my brother did that and it killed him. I'm going to get my Master's, work my gigs, write my screenplay treatments, articles and songs and stories and worry about all that other stuff after winter when April, the cruelest month, returns.

Woody Guthrie died today, forty two years ago in 1967. If he were still alive, he would be 97. I love his music, since I first heard it, and understood right away how Dylan wrote like him. "Deportee" was current events, a volatile topic in the thirties when Guthrie wrote it. Just like in the sixties, Oxford, Mississippi and Hollis Brown and the current events of those times found themselves into Dylan's material. It's just current events. I remember getting the music book for the movie "Bound for Glory" and learning the songs. Guthrie spoke in such plain terms that truth with a capital T emerged. His words ran past misery and anger into mystery and bewilderment at the human condition in America. He spoke of the ideal versus the reality. He was a spokesman for his generations pains, and there were many. He was so much better. They say he wrote "This Land is Your Land" in response to Irving Berlin's "God Bless America". I understand that. Here's to you, Woody.

He knows what it is to live free
And this mustang, he sure doesn't want to see me.
So he lays back his ears
And rears into the air
Prances round the corral,
as if to dare me
Or anyone crazy enough to come near... to beware.

I look at the sky and speak to the wind
Of the will of a horse and
the need of a friend
And for three months of summer
I carry his water
Talk to him slow
As I feed him his dinner
And we share these canyons that I'll never leave
He knows what it is to be free.

I'm breaking horses
In Colorado
Deep in these canyons
Where the wind seldom blows
Breaking wild horses
Until I'm too old
Breaking wild horses
in Colorado

He knows what it's like to be free
So I give him the best part of me
I'll gentle him down, best that I can
I'll draw the hard line, and keep a firm hand
Someday the warden will take him from me,
But he knows what it is to be free
He knows what it is to be free.