This is My Land [used to be anyway]

YouTube - MGM - The Orbison Way ^ | January 1966 | Roy Orbison, Bill Dees

[Cincinatus' Wife]

An American from Wink, Texas:

From the 1966 MGM album "The Orbison Way"

The sun on the rim of the hill
Overlooking all that I love
Lights up every leaf and blade

Birds circling high above
With trembling hand
I reach down and say

This is my land

This land will pass on to my child
When he's grown
To love it as much as I
For all the sons gone by

And when he's a man
He'll do what he can
For this my land
This is my land

When young men die in glory
And for freedom take their stand
May they sing this same proud story
This is my land

When life fades away
And my body is laid to rest in the ground
May this comfort fill my soul

Here on the land, I know
That those after me, say with much dignity
"This is my land, this is my land"

[seeker41]

I was born in Kermit and Wink is a short drive west. My parents knew Roy and used to go to little clubs to hear him back in the day. The clubs were BYOB and smoked filled places where couples did the jitter bug. I remember Kermit fondly, best years of my life were spent there. Its a pit now overrun with mexicans. Sad.

[cloudmountain]

This is a white, Christian country. It always has been and always will be.

Stuffing all the commercials with "people of color," showing ANY "people of color" with college diplomas, displaying CEO "people of color" and filling the Internet with "people of color" success stories DOESN'T change the facts that this is a white, Christian country.

Hispanics are European, that is, white, depending on how much or how little Indian, therefore Asian, blood they have in them. Their FACES show that.

Almost all "black" people, in this country, at least, have some European/white blood in them. One only needs to see REAL Africans to realize that: they are EBONY, 100% black-as-your-computer, with NO white blood in them AT ALL, not a single drop. We visited Kenya when we were living in Saudi Arabia and I SAW them with my own 20-20 eyes.
*Most "African-Americans" are Christian as well. And since they, mixed as they are, make up 12% of the population, that leaves a HEFTY amount of white Christians "left over."

[Rodamala]

I had worked out on the Texas-New Mexico Railroad in 2011, 2012, and 2013. In 2013 one of the big jobs was building a crude by rail terminal near Wink. I would have to come down Highway 18 from Hobbs because that was closer to the home base in Eunice.

One day I ran into Wink proper and saw the little Roy Orbison museum was actually open (it was by appointment only and some kid from England had called ahead)... I dropped everything I was doing and got to check it out... the little old lady there actually pulled a pair of Roy's famous sunglasses out of the case (they were the pair he wore for his last stage performance) and she let me wear them... he was blind as a bat!

Here is a picture I took in July 2013 of the museum. The town of wink is tiny, but great things are happening all around that area... from Monahans to Lovington, the economy is buzzing with all the fracking. Good people in all those towns. Even Kermit. Go Yellowjackets!

click the photo for the full resolution link to it

[seeker41]

Thanks so much for that info. Perhaps I should move back, currently I am stuck in Floriduh.

[Rodamala]

One morning in December of 2011 I was driving down Highway 18 Somewhere between Eunice and Jal headed to Monahans where we had a rail gang working. The sun was just below the horizon and I looked east and sunbeams were streaming up from below the horizon like I ain't never seen before. I just had to stop and take it in.

Got out of the truck and these sunbeams extended up and up and up and over my head and behind me off into space. It was truly breathtaking.

Then there was the time I was heading north at night and a green fireball streaked across the sky lighting up the entire desert like daylight...

Then the time I was there in late May 2012 and went and sat on the dunes south of Jal and watched an eclipsed sun setting.

The working conditions were brutal... 18 hour days, 7 days a week... my pickup actually took a bullet on the doorpost about 3 inches from my head in Hobbs. Derailments... Uncontrollable contractors... difficult client.... even a grade crossing fatality right there on FM 1232 at the grade crossing at night (guy slammed into the side of a train crossing there at night coming from Wink going out to Highway 18... at 70 MPH)... but all that time out there in SE NM and Western Texas left a permanent mark on me... probably more good than bad.... and there was a LOT of bad... I probably came back here to PA with legitimate post traumatic stress injuries.

I would go back... even if it were to just visit... I would go back. Another time I

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Thank you for your comments.

"OH, PRETTY WOMAN" - Roy Orbison on American Bandstand 1966

Bridge over troubled water

[txrangerette]

Thanks so much for recounting your experience.

When you wrote, he was “blind as a bat”, I hope that was a figure of speech to mean he had poor eyesight.

That was a problem that ran in his family.

However, he was not blind.

He certainly did need strongly corrective lenses.

The problem is there is so much misinformation about the man, and on the net you find people who assure everyone that he was totally blind.

Untrue.

[txrangerette]

You wrote that when visiting in Wink, TX, the Orbison Museum happened to be open because “some kid from England had called ahead” for an appointment.

This is an important truth to be noted about Roy. That his appeal was universal. He spent so much time travelling the world and performing LIVE. His “go to” place away from Nashville, and near the end of life, Malibu, was always England. The British loved him dearly, as did the Australians, and in many places where he never physically travelled, he was beloved because people knew of him through the BBC’s worldwide reach and accessed his recordings.

I refer to countries such as Japan, Free China and India.

Much of Latin America knew of him through the flip side of “Oh Pretty Woman”, which was a Spanish musical sound sung in English, except for the title words repeated in the song, which are “Yo te amo Maria” followed by “Maria mia more”.

People in those countries played the flip side while English speakers were obsessing over the hit side.

Once in 1980, he took a chance to perform in Bulgaria, which was still behind the Iron Curtain. Only once did he try venturing out on the street from his hotel room. He was mobbed by fans and well wishers the minute he was recognized. The scene was impossible to control, so he made it back inside and didn’t need to be told, Mr. Orbison, don’t try that again.

This was 1980 and his multiple hit records were well in the past. A fact about which, the Bulgarian people didn’t give a rip. And those were the songs he still performed everywhere, to very large audiences.

“This Is My Land” is a universal truth.

It’s just sad that most people in this world will never have the opportunity to pass something of such value along to their children...

[Rodamala]

Hahaha! No I meant blind as a bat, figureatively! Those "sunglasses" were "coke bottle" thick lensed, STRONG prescription that gave me a headache looking through them.

I still have a couple photos on my phone that I took of Roy's High School Year book photos... lemme go hunt them down.

[Rodamala]

I believe this one was 7th grade (before Roy figured out that you needed to be a crooner to get the attention of girls):

(click image for full resolution)

[txrangerette]

You explained the mark left on your psyche while working in SE New Mexico and Western Texas. It never leaves you, does it?

Roy Orbison left Wink but the mark of that land didn’t leave him.

How do I know?

Well, one of his hit songs, in 1964 just prior to “Pretty Woman”, was “It’s Over.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9JArvEJ64M

Which he wrote, with words like these:

Golden days before they end
Whisper secrets to the wind

and:

Tender nights before they fly
Send falling stars that seem to cry

and:

Setting suns before they fall
Echo to you that’s all that’s all

You won’t be seeing rainbows anymore

But you’ll see lonely sunsets after all

It’s over...

The other way I know is, I’ve been there.

Thanks for sharing.

[Rodamala]

This was High School... Junior or Senior year, I forget:

[txrangerette]

Don’t know about when he linked up in his mind being a singer with getting girls’ attention.

But when Roy was six years old his dad gave him a guitar and by age 8 he wrote his first song, for his grandmother, and sang and played it for her.

And at that age, his dad asked him what did he want to be when he grew up, a fireman, a policeman, an oil field worker or what, and he answered without hesitation:

“I’ll be a singer.”

[txrangerette]

Yes I have seen that one.

It was his senior year.

And that’s what his classmates wrote about him.

[txrangerette]

“When young men die in glory
And for freedom take their stand
May they sing this same proud story
This is my land”

Amen.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

We could use more Roy Orbison today.