La Musica

Here are the lyrics to the song that accompanies our Train float. This song will be sung about once out of every four or five song played during the parade. The other songs will be traditional conjunto songs from the Valley.

Jane and Gary Norian and I met yesterday to work on the music (OK, Gary and Jane worked on the music and I just said I like it). Of course, if you have been reading the blog, this will make sense, since the float is based on that old photo of four bandits who captured an old steam engine and we're gonna have them represented by four pinatas. Imagine Mexican accordion ballad, 12 string guitars, fast pace, drama, etc.):

FOUR YOUNG BANDITOS

Four young banditos took over a train
They went looking for treasure
But weren’t expecting the rain.

One of them said “revolution’s on high”
But he murmured to himself, “I don’t want to die!”

The second young bandit
He spun and he spoke -
“I wanted a life
For a broken cowpoke.
But I’m just a grave robber
No pride on my part.
I’m only the driver
This ain’t no fresh start.”

The third bandit he cried
From his horse and his throat
“I wanted to love
Ever note that I wrote.
But I’m never a poet,
always a clown -
Just a green cowpoke laughed out of town."

I’m the last young bandito
I’m so sad to say.
If my mother only knew
She would die before the day...

So I thought of my mother
and just walked away.

If you need a bandito
And you want a new start
Just go your own way
I’ll take my own part


Too many boxcars
Too much old smoke
Too many lawmen
In love with the rope

Four young banditos went looking for fame
Each whispered to me, “I’m sorry I came.”


Actually, these lyrics have changed a tiny bit, but you get the idea. Jane is on board for singing it during the parade and I've asked Rey, the guy who runs the Conjunto Hall of Fame in San Benito, to line up Gloria Jean and Raymond, who were on last year's float. Gloria is probably the best female accordion player in the State of Texas, no bullshit, and she's no where near 20. Raymond is amazing on the 12 string bass guitar (the baja sexto) but is also pretty crazy at hard-core rock rifts on a stratocaster.

I will know in the next couple of days if they can do it but Rey thinks they will. He also thinks that the whole Conjunto Estrella band might be available (Gloria Jean and Raymond play in that band). We'll see.


Here's the band in a prior performance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8at46Ws2Cjo

There's also an awesome clip on youtube of Gloria Jean playing a solo with Lil Joe y La Famila, perennial Latin Grammy Winners, and blowing Lil Joe's audience away. She shows up at the 4:45 mark.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yGy4vrlWuk

And another of her doing an old Freddy Fender song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZjw9LiQRww&NR=1

I asked Gary to reassure me -- as he was dolling up the bandito song -- that the band could learn the song quickly, but when I told him a little about them, he just dismissed my concerns.  There shouldn't be any problems with that.

I also found the perfect bushel basket in Houston to serve as the smokestack for the locomotive (and to house the smoke machine which I now proudly possess).

Jane and Kristy and Rachel are in Mission on Friday to start the decoration of the floats. Yay!!!

Two Auctions and a Skinned Boiler

So Friday we were all set to go to work and a friend calls and says that there are storage shed auctions all day long.  Judd and I set out to look.  Judd wanted things he could resell.  I wanted to find diaries, great photographs, and Picassos.  

This lady went looking for a new toe.

 But this is all we found.

So we went back to work, struggling to get into the spirit.

The boiler was complete on the outside but needed its first layer of skin.

Forget it.  Time for a late lunch.  We went to a place called Pepe's, where no one spoke a word of English.

However, the food was SO MUCH BETTER THAN EL PATIO!!  (We got it to go.)
  

Danny was still working on the motorized wheels.  The little paint mixer motors didn't have enough power to work the wheels, which we estimate to be about 20+ pounds before any decoration is added.

Judd and I started cutting up the green material for outdoor, above-ground swimming pools.

It scuffed easily because it has been living out in the sun for a long time.

We are regularly visited by Danny's grandkids, and when we are, all work stops.

So I tried showing what the bandit outfits are gonna look like.  I got tired and went home.

The next morning, I showed up to an empty shop.  Apparently the rats had eaten the kids.

One of the kids had left a momento.

Looking at the board carefully, you can see that our plans have changed here and there.

That green swimming pool material was staring us in the face.

But there was a hardware store going out of business in San Juan and everything was being auctioned off.  So we went.  We bought 45 gallons of paint, a truck-load of screws, bolts and other fasteners, and a bunch of other stuff to re-stock Danny's shop.

And most of the candy.

Oh, and we have the first skin on the boiler.  Maybe it's starting to look like a train.

Step One: Coffee. Step Two: Tobacco. Step Three: Hold the Board.

Baby Steps

 Danny, Doyt and Judd spent the day finishing out the trailer.  The day I spent lawyering, they spent welding.  They flipped the skid pads on the bottom to make the whole trailer higher and figured out how to bring the tongue down so it will still fit onto a truck, even though it's higher.  They also painted the heavy iron frame a bright aluminum.  Supposedly they also changed the tires, but the new ones -- if they are new, and Danny wasn't just lying -- look about as safe as the old ones which had been rotting in Doyt's pasture for the last who knows how long. 

Yesterday, then, they attached 8 foot long supports across it and finally laid 3/4 inch plywood down to make the floor.

 While we were doing this, Suzie was trying to save photos from her family albums, which burned up in the trailer fire a little more than a month ago.  The albums were all singed, burned or water damaged. 

 I didn't do much with the trailer renovations, but I did find and claim a very stylish pair of gloves in a crate in the shop (there were about 200+ pair of new gloves in the crate). 

 By the time I got a decent pair of gloves selected, the trailer was pretty much done.

 Doyt tested it out for stability.

 I actually did do a few things while they were getting the trailer ready.  First, I went by the Citrus Fiesta office to see if we can have a two-part trailer.  The answer is yes, as long as the total is less than 40 feet.  So if we use this new trailer and a 9 footer that Doyt has, we can make it.  We will return the big trailer we used last year to the VFW hall. 

While I was at the Citrus Fiesta office, I mentioned the photos taken last year by the crowd.  I (or rather, my sister Martha and her daughter Erin) handed out 100 disposable cameras on the day of the parade and told people to take photos of anything they like.  We asked them to return the cameras and, shockingly, 63 people did.  Each camera took 27 photos, but not all of them came out.  So there are far in excess of 1,000 4x6 parade photos taken by residents of Mission.  Wouldn't it be great, I thought, if they were shown during this year's Citrus Fiesta?  Nope.  No room, says the CF office.  Try the Mission Historical Museum.  Since it is just across the street, I went over and talked to a nice guy named Vernon, who is the Archivist and Curator.  He liked the idea but says they're booked this year.  Maybe next year?  He was also interested in the larger documentary project about Mission I've been doing.  I told him about it, showed him the book I've been working on, and he seemed pretty interested in that.  As he paged through the book, I warned him there was some home-made, found, anonymous porn from the good citizens of Mission towards the back.  You could almost feel the book burn Vernon's hands.  He dropped it and gingerly picked it back up, flipped through a few pages to be polite, and sent me on my way.  I did tell him that I had no intention of showing any porn in Mission, and he seemed to like the fact that we could agree on something.

SO, I wandered by the Upper Valley Art League, which was closed.  But an artist and teacher named Gloria let me in and we chatted about the parade photos.  She said the idea sounded great and that they might be able to do something in February.  I'm going back today to meet with the executive director and a couple of board members.  Here's their website:  http://uval.us/  And here's some of the work in their last members show.

I also went by Home Depo for some 20 foot 2x4s but they were out.  Special order item.  Takes 3 days.  Danny and Doyt just used some 14 footers instead.

Oh, and the best part:  as a result of this blog, my friend, Dan Patchin, found out I was looking for a certain train photo -- we both remembered it, but we couldn't find it anywhere -- to use as the model for our float.  Here it is, courtesy of Dan and the SMU photo archive:

A little closer on the rebels:

I sent the photo to the pinata shop and told them to make four pinatas, exactly like these, but that we would put different faces on them.  There are four bandits and four McClain brothers, so I asked my brothers to send me photos to use.  Here's what my brother Chris sent:

So by the end of the day, we had laid the floor to the trailer and painted it with a first coat of paint.  Dinner time rolled around and Danny, Suzie and I went to El Patio for some culture and delicious cuisine.

 Who can say what will happen next (other than this lady anyway).