Legend and reality meet in the guise of a red headed stranger

Don’t cross him, don’t boss him
He’s wild in his sorrow
He’s ridin’ and hidin’ in pain
Don’t fight him, don’t spite him
Just wait till tomorrow
Maybe he’ll ride on again

— The Red Headed Stranger, Willie Nelson



It was during the summer of ‘05 that I first ventured West, crammed in a luggage-packed rental car with a couple of friends and a Rand McNally road map. We were Texas bound that 4th of July, in search of cowboys, country music and a Wild West adventure.

Our destination was Willie Nelson’s 4th of July Picnic, performed that year at the historic Fort Worth Stockyards. A longtime follower of the long-haired hippie, I’d yearned for years to make the 1200 mile trek to the annual Farm Aid benefit concert. And thanks to a week’s worth of back alley motels, my insufficiently funded friends and I could afford the road trip.

Even now, images from our Fort Worth journey surface frequently during my daily, mediocre tasks ... the fiery ball of a southwest sunset, the dry prairie tallgrass sweeping along our interstate route, the sweat stains of my dank white tank, the crimson glow of my sunburned flesh, and the hot wind that covered my bare limbs in dust.

However, there’s one image that casts dominion over all others, a figure whose emergence fused both legend and reality late one afternoon along our journey.

“I think we’re lost,” I moaned that day, after circling the outskirts of Memphis, Tenn., for nearly an hour due to an unexpected road closure.

Willie sang the ballad of “The Red Headed Stranger” while our disgruntled navigator, Jamie, waved the road map at me and our dozing, backseat passengers.

“I told you we took the wrong exit,” she sighed as she turned down the volume to the Willie Nelson’s Greatest Hits CD. As she studied the road map for an alternate route, our white sedan sputtered to a stop at an interstate convenience store.

“Let’s take a quick break,” I yawned, leaning my sweaty forearms onto the steering wheel.

“Are you sure this place is safe?” Jamie replied, gesturing towards two scantily clad, handcuffed women standing by a nearby cop car.

Eager for directional assistance, my awakening cohorts and I discounted Jamie’s jitters. And walking past the apprehended “ladies of the night,” we foolishly entered the interstate quick-stop.

We were searching through the store’s stock of pork rinds and Pepsi-Colas when a glaring gang of roughnecks assembled by a nearby shelf of hoop cheese. The crude crew cackled between catcalls, alerting us of our perilous predicament.

“Stick together!” I whispered while we gathered our bags of Chicharron’s. Meanwhile, the punk posse advanced.

The head scoundrel whistled as he examined both our lady loot and our bags of pork cracklings. And casting his cigarette to the scratched tile floor, the leader motioned for his pack.

We prayed to the Good Lord as the criminal crew closed in on us. And as a haze of earthen dust wafted to the swing of the convenience store’s door, the Good Lord answered.

The creaking door’s thud provoked a sudden silence, and a blue-jeaned cowboy advanced. Time ticked with the clomping of his battered boots, while we all stood at attention to the renegade.

The drifter’s grizzled beard emerged from a clump of amber side-burns and sandpaper stubble. His weathered skin testified to the life of hard liquor and Memphis heat. And his bloodshot eyes, veiled by a red bandana wrapped above his chapped brows, seared us with their penetrating attack.

The crazed cowboy’s piercing stare shifted from our road trip troop to the posse of riffraff who’d caged us by the pork rind aisle. And as though the stranger had drawn a pistol to the criminal clan, the outlaw gang disappeared.

Abandoning our Pepsi-Colas and pork rinds, we scurried out the door and through the now vacant parking lot. And as we piled into the Chevy Classic, it rolled into reverse and squealed onto the highway.

Few words were spoken as we drove the last miles of Tennessee and resumed our road trip route, eventually culminating in Fort Worth.

Five years later, all that remains of our “west bound and down” adventure is a scrapbook with “Texas Road Trip 2005” inscribed on its burgundy cover. Bull riding cowboys, country music legends, and a Texas dust field 4th of July concert are captured in the scrapbook’s snapshots. Yet, there’s one image that can’t be found in the photographed journal.

Sometimes, while tapping away at my Dispatch computer, I pause to remember the great Texas road trip of ‘05. And as I recall that last “hurrah,” before my youthful frivolity fell to grown-up responsibilities, I visualize him — the red headed stranger — whose presence alone commanded justice, and who without a word rescued our west-bound band from a gang of outlaws in Memphis, Tenn.


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