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I'd play the Red River Valley
And he'd sit in the kitchen and cry
And run his fingers through seventy years of livin'
And wonder, "Lord, has ever' well I've drilled gone dry?"
We was friends, me and this old man

We was like desperados waiting for a train
Like desperados waiting for a train

He's a drifter and a driller of oil wells
And an old school man of the world
He taught me how to drive his car
When he's too drunk to
And he'd wink and give me money for the girls
And our lives was like some old western movie

Like desperados waiting for a train
Like desperados waiting for a train

From the time that I could walk he'd take me with him
To a bar called the Green Frog Cafe
And there was old men with beer guts and dominoes
Lying 'bout their lives while they'd played
And I was just a kid that they all called his sidekick

We was like desperados waiting for a train
Like desperados waiting for a train

One day I looked up and he's pushin' eighty
And there's brown tobacco stains all down his chin
Well to me he's one of the heroes of this country
So why's he all dressed up like them old men
Drinking beer and playin' Moon and Forty-two

Just like a desperado waiting for a train
Like a desperado waiting for a train

And then the day before he died, I went to see him
I was grown and he was almost gone
So we just closed our eyes and dreamed us up a kitchen
And sang another verse to that old song
"Come on, Jack, that son of a bitch is coming"

And we're desperados waiting for a train
Like desperados waiting for a train
Like desperados waiting for a train
Like desperados waiting for a train

Written by: Guy Clark