The second song I learned to sing

The first song I remember learning the words to was “Jesus Loves Me.” The second was “Amarillo by Morning” by George Strait. I like to think that the first song got the message across so I could move on from life’s most basic lesson to the issues in the heart of a young bull rider making his way across the Southwest.

My father was a strawberry and tomato farmer. He had fields out Highway 107 along the Nolichukcy River. I was three in the back of our Ford Aerostar as my mom drove my older brother and his friends to pick strawberries “down on the river.” We were taking the turn at Crossroads Market headed towards Embreeville when my mom put CD #1 from her Strait Out of the Box box set. Track #14: Amarillo by Morning.

I didn’t understand a word that was sung, but it’s music: it doesn’t start with what is said — it starts with melodies, heart postures, and then it searches until it finds something, somewhere, maybe Amarillo. Or maybe a song is just content to be looking.

We went to a rodeo a few years later, and I heard about 8 seconds is the goal for a bull rider when they pull the gate. The next time I listened to the song (most likely my mother playing that Strait Out of the Box CD), the lyrics were illuminated: this is about the rodeo. What the song is about sounds obvious now, but this was magic to a 5-year-old discovering that songs can speak about things without saying them.

The fiddle that starts and ends “Amarillo by Morning” sounds like it’s been searching the Llano Estacado for something worth living for. It sounds like next week could mean Cheyenne or Mesquite. Either way, the 8 seconds on the back of a bull is a taste of life so infectious, he’ll suffer the loss of anything, like a wife and a girlfriend, to keep reaching for it.

I’ve never stopped loving this song. I’ve played it in 06 Toyotas and 17 Subarus, driving between Johnson City and Knoxville, Colquitt and Bainbridge, or Kansas City and Denver.

As an adult when I listen, half of me is missing being three and singing at the top of my lungs in the back of a red Ford Aerostar.

The other half understands what it is to be out on the plains at a small gas station, the fluorescents purpling the air. The only sounds are the late-night semis on the highway. And the only company you have is the town up ahead, be that Amarillo, Kingdom City, Missouri, or Kanarado on the Kansas/Colorado line.“I ain’t rich, but Lord, I’m free,”

Yet that sad fiddle comes back and implies I might be lying about how “free” I feel. I don’t know the answers. Everything I’ve got is just what I’ve got on. But sometimes songs aren’t about the answers. They’re just happy to be searching. Either way, by the morning, Amarillo’s where I’ll be.

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