MIRROR MAN SPEAKS :
[Bob Holman speaks]
Carson Lake, Sand Mountain, Cold Springs... you'll bypass Desatoya Peak, cross New Pass Range over to Bob Scott, and in Jornada del Muerto there's 250 souls, looking at you with 499 eyes -- the Horn of Death. For a hunnert miles you'll be blinking at that tall stone tower, built by who knows who for who knows what in who knows when. Where the Great Basin empties in the Sulphur Spring Range between the Wah Wah Mountains and Confession Ridge, uh, Confusion Rage. They call it the loneliest highway in the world, where the road heaves up like a volcano of solitude. Sulphur Spring Range. Carson Lake. A volcano of solitude, a party for silence, a shard of glass, a cracked rear view tacked up on a porch post -- What's the mirror see, anyhow? The mirror is a sea, I'd say. "Drinkin coffee from a crimped up can...." Why there's even a Cleveland here if you take that detour north on 10. Hell, that's no detour, right by Charlotte and Ruth -- places named for women. Can't even remember to forget em anymore. Over there where the names are stripped from the roads so's all you get's numbers, whistled in the wind -- 15, Ought-6, good ol 75. The flappin tin sign on the loose shingle board puts the price up at about 17 cent a gallon. And that's even afore there was such a thing as unleaded. 17 cent a gallon, and the highway bright and shiny like it's asking for more. You know, somebody said the past didn't go anywhere, and I'm just settin here waitin till it does.
LOST NATION ROAD :
[Robert Kidney sings]
Out of the night,
into the dawn
the rose lit road rolls on,
and on, and on.
The carpenters were knockin it up
with the hammer and the saw when I came into view.
"This is all one of those facades," she said.
I says, "This town will grow on you."
Then came the voice from the burning hot,
"It ain't real good but you know what you've got"
You know there's always a sign
that points the way home
until some jackass blows the arrows off with his shining shotgun.
Right from the start I knew
I'd always be running from you.
"Now, how did you know that?" she said.
I says, "I'm not the only pawn on the lost highway."
