A Song Crying Out for a Video

Then there was the time I saw the great Hank Williams singing on the stage in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and he was all dressed up in drag.
From his rose red lips to his rhinestone hips he belted out song after song as he drank from a brown paper bag.
And the songs he sang of love and pain, so pure perfect reflections of human imperfections, it damn near choked me up
But the rest of the show, was kind of slow.
And then someone woke me up.

Later on the Astros were silently beating the living crap out of Cincinnati on the TV above and a little to the left of the great Hank Williams' head.
As a busty suicide blonde waitress poured him a double shot of 'whatever you got' and laughingly said 'I thought you were dead.'
The pool balls cracked as he tilted his head back and told her how he had been a big star but now country music was full of freaks.
He sat there, in the TV glare.
Mascara streaked his cheeks.

When I was only sixteen years old I went from Houston to Abilene with a spunky stunningly handsome woman in a Volkswagen Bug.
She was grown with some kids all her own, a committment-free divorcee, and I was a man in love.
We had only one 8-track tape but it was of the late great Hank Williams and we sang in two-part harmony.
'Hey good lookin', how's about cookin'Something up with me.'

Back at the bar they were calling last call so I gave the barmaid a credit card to pay up my tab.
The TV was turned off and the stage was dark and the great Hank Williams was gone so I asked her to call me a cab.
She said if you like I can give you a ride, so there we were out the door and into the city of brotherly loveInto the night, out of sight.
In a VW Bug.

"The Great Hank" - Robert Earl Keen