Jet Trails Talking Blues: Un-empathetic Version Gerry Hubbard

Jet Trails Talking Blues: Un-empathetic Version Gerry Hubbard

Jet Trails Talking Blues: Un-empathetic Version

I was working in the milk house singing “Seven Lonely Days”
When I heard my first jet aircraft flying by
I think it was the Saber Jets from the SAC base out in Rome
That left those crisp white contrails in the sky

And after that I seemed to hear and see jet planes a lot
When the mountain skies were cloudless blue & clear
And I thought it must be always clean and cool up in that plane
While we worked in dust and grease and dirt down here.

I recall the old Case baler and a sea of seed and dust
As we pulled those “blocks” and pushed those wires through
And I’d see the long jet contrails like the white foam on the sea
And there had to be  a better job to do.

I was “Leaving On A Jet Plane” long before the song was sung
As  the summer  gnats & horse flies  buzzed my head
“Where  the rain never falls and the sun always shines”
Was a lyric still unwritten in the attic in my bed.

“Away and westward bound, high above the clouds she’ll fly”
Was a thought that seemed to help us while we toiled
In the winter in the snow, in the spring time cool & wet
In the summer when the dust & hayseed boiled.

Now when I fly and see the country roll out far below
And I think of those old hard days on the farm
I don’t look back in anger, I just always look ahead
And realize it didn’t do us harm

And I wonder if there’s not some kid who’s watching us fly by
And he’s stuck there doing some damn dirty task
And he wishes somehow someway he was up here in this plane
And then I think…

“Tough shit, son, kiss my ass.

“I got out by driving truck and digging’ lot’s of ditch,

So if you want out, just suck it up and do your own damn bit.”

Winter Mornings, Gerry Hubbard

Winter Mornings, Gerry Hubbard

Winter Mornings  Original by Gerry Hubbard

We boys slept in the attic on that Catskill Mountain Farm
And though the rain and snow blew in it seemed to cause no harm
We’d get up winter mornings, shake the snow off of our beds
Then grab our clothes and run downstairs where that old wood stove was fed

We’d dress as fast as young kids could, we pulled on several layers
And “Sword Of The Lord” from the radio blared out those Baptist prayers
Mom would bake some pancakes, fry up some ham and eggs
Then we brushed our teeth in the kitchen sink from the brushes hung on pegs

The only running water from the hand pump by the sink
We used to wash ourselves and cook and fill the pail to drink
We finally put a bathroom in when I was seventeen
But with ceiling low, you had to squat to get remotely clean

When younger, all us kids would group around the kitchen stove
And huddle by the oven, as smells of wood smoke wove
All through the house and smells of ham and pancakes filled the air
I close my eyes, recall it all, it’s like I’m standing there

Marilyn fell flat-palmed one time upon that sizzling iron
And burned her hands with blisters while the rest of us looked on
She couldn’t balance, put her hands down several times at least
Till Mother finally grabbed her and salved her hands with grease

Those winter mornings come to me in Ohio winter’s cold
And seem to keep their clarity even as I grow more old
And the fireplace that burns with gas in our modern family room
Sure a hell beats that old stove on that run-down family farm.

Orrin Hubbard's Suicide

Orrin Hubbard's Suicide

Sidney, New York. Orrin Hubbard, about 52, shot himself in Sidney, brother of Mrs. Joseph Dingman of Prattsville...Death Notice December 19, 1900


Orrin Hubbard shot himself at Sidney in New York.
I wonder what the pressures were that made him pull the cork.

Was it the booze or opium, back then the drugs of choice,
That made him do that final act to forever still his voice.

Undated is his nephew’s death ’neath runners of a sleigh.
I wonder if that accident got to him in some way.

We’ll never really know, it’s far beyond our minds to figure,
To conjure up that small last straw that made him pull the trigger.

So Orrin Hubbard ended all his pain and tears and strife,
And Orrin Hubbard took a gun, and then he took his life.

I guess man’s minds' the only thing that takes the world unleavened,
Then cooks a heaven into hell or a hell into a heaven.

My Last Ride With Glenn Taylor, Gerry Hubbard

Last Ride With Glenn Taylor, Gerry Hubbard

https://hubbardfamilymusic.tumblr.com/post/6004244339/my-last-ride-with-glenn-taylor-gerry-hubbard

Me and Marna Talking Blues My Own Ballad Of Forty Dollars

Me and Marna Talking Blues

My Own Ballad Of Forty Dollars

Me and Marna, My Own Ballad Of Forty Dollars

From the language school in Monterey in 1958
I hitched to San Diego to take a needed break
My older sister Marilyn had lived there for a while
With husband Jim and Marna, a seven month old child

They picked me up in a 54 bright green Ford two door coupe,
The backseat full of groceries, to feed the weekend group
With Marilyn in the middle and Marna on her lap,
Jim drove, me in the death seat,  in my beat-up Army cap

We were driving to Ramona on a fast 4 lane highway,
I recall the sun was brilliant on that cloudless summer day
At 65 we smoothly cruised through mountain vistas wide
Till some guy ran a stop sign and hit us in the side.

The death seat door snapped open, in a blink of shocked alarm,
I hit the road at 60 per with a baby in my arms
I recall my sister flying by in a storm of milk and flour
As Jim one-handed steered the car so he wouldn’t run us over

On heels and butt I slid along but then I lost my grip
As Marna’s legs began to slide real low beside my hips.
Then suddenly we took a bounce and then we flew like birds
As Marna’s leg outside my thigh hit a concrete curb

Then everything was blurry and my mind and body buzzed
As I wondered what had happened and where the baby was.
In just about a second,  four Navy Corpsman came
And piled us all on stretchers & made sure we knew our names.

You see, a Navy ambulance was just behind our Ford
They quickly gathered us all up and took us to their ward.
Marna’s leg was badly bruised, my sister cut her lip,
I seemed fine but my old jeans were split up to the hip.

We finally got all sorted out and went on home to eat,
Bruised and sore and all of us unsteady on our feet.
When I got up next morning I felt a little sick
I thought that  every inch of me’d been beaten with a stick.

I caught a bus to Monterey an 8 hour painful ride
I had to get back to the base before my pass expired.
When I signed in next morning I heard the top kick say,
Who dragged you through a knothole?  You look like hell today.”

“I heard you went much further than the limits of your pass,
If you did and you admit it, the CO will have your ass.”
I was stiff and awful sore for just about a week
Then Top Kick called me in to meet a slick insurance geek.

He said  “I want to settle and my client wants release,
Here’s a check for $40 dollars, cash it quickly if you please.
The top kick growled at me and said “I can’t believe your luck,
You took  the world’s best friggin ride and got paid forty bucks”

Marna’s a grown woman now, she grew up warm and sweet
She’s got a loving family and every time we meet
I remind her that I saved her life and that she had all the luck
While all I got was a skinned up ass and a measly forty bucks.

Dad A Confession, Original By Gerry Hubbard

Dad A Confession, Original By Gerry Hubbard

Solidarity Forever

An Operating Engineer was what my dad was called 
He ran the big equipment, and I guess he drove them all
Dozers, graders, drag-line cranes, he worked ten hours a day
From spring through fall, six days a week, he drew good union pay

He’d usually come home close to dark, all sunburned, cloaked with dust 
Us kids would all race down the hill, to greet him, to be first 
He’d stop the car and pick us up, on fenders up we’d ride 
We hung from running boards and doors, rising like the tide

Euclid scrapers, high-speed pumps, he “sloped” with Cat D8s 
Through parts of west New England and all through New York State 
He worked the New York Thruway and Route One-Forty-Five, 
Milking cows at four am to keep the farm alive

In summer’s dust and searing sun his lips and hands would crack, 
And he’d rub in Bag Balm Ointment that he carried in a sack 
In winter’s numbing wind and cold, he stood ten hours a day 
To watch an air compressor pump water from a quay

We’d go to work with him sometimes when work sites were nearby
And ride the big equipment, it was dusty, hot and dry
LaVerne and I and sometimes Doug would go and spend the day 
With diesel fumes & roaring “Eucs” as dozers pushed away

And though he had his issues, he was held in high regard 
And I never heard him once complain ‘bout working so damned hard. 
When someone said I looked like him at a Hill reunion chat 
Tom O’Hara softly said, “Well, there’s nothing wrong with that”.

And though I’m not religious, as all friends will attest 
Here’s a spiritual iota to which I must confess 
Sometimes when summer’s thunder clouds are roiling up on high 
I think of Dad on his big D8, “sloping” in the sky…
Sometimes when summer’s thunder clouds are roiling up on high I think of Dad on his big D8, “sloping” in the sky

Ote & Myrtie Talking Blues

Ote And Myrtie Talking Blues Gerry Hubbard

Ote & Myrtie Talking Blues By Gerry Hubbard


Talking blues is a form of country music. It is characterized by rhythmic speech or near-speech where the melody is free, but the rhythm is strict.  See below for Wikipedia link.

Ote and Myrtie were our neighbors up the road a half a mile.
Spinster maid and bachelor brother and you seldom saw them smile.
Pinched lips, all prim and proper, all clothes buttoned to the top,
But always free and easy with the rumors they would drop.

Myrtie was a teacher long retired but taught in church.
While Otis ran some “young stock” and I guess he never worked.
Got the mumps when just a teen that my father said “moved down” .
Just another reason that no children were around.

'Cause I always thought them married when I saw them on the road,
In that pretty two-door Chevy with their monthly grocery load.
We usually never saw or heard them very much at all
‘Less our cows got in their garden then we’d get an angry call.

Us kids and Dad would get the cows and try to fix the fence,
But a ruined and trampled garden?  There is no recompense.
“Good fences make good neighbors” are the words of Robert Frost,
And we should have kept them better no matter what the cost.

Then I get a slightest comfort when I think about it all,

He also wrote "Something there is that doesn't love a wall".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talking_blues