Glendale (A Working Title)

Grandpa was dead, before I was born,
but he lives on inside my head
so I got no reason  to ever mourn.

Never met him til I stumbled on a book
"OH, Ranger" was its name, but
it was where it was that was strange.

It was down in Santa Fe, on vacation,
in a place that I remember well
flipping through pages to kill an hour
while my then wife got her hair cut.

Out jumped Jim McBride on his motor bike
and took off running with my mind.
Read about his adventures, some of the
strangest that I have ever heard,
like the day he was bringing a prisoner in
and he woke up with the prisoner standing over him
holding an ax or something over him.
Well, grandpa asked real calm,
"When did you get up?" before the fight broke out.


Well grandpa made the paper, just a time or two.
Once when he testified and once in an interview.

He was a "herd keeper"
that's what they called them then.
One of the first rangers a former "wagoneer".
Not a friendly guy, from all I've heard.
But back then, nobody was.

Yellowstone after the Nez Perse war
was almost no place you ain't seen before.
Hell freezing over, Jim Bridger said
first time I read it
that phrase stuck in my head.

 
Mother had told me,
"Was your grandpa who shot the bear."
that stood six feet of angry tall
when I saw it there
in the middle of Old Faithful lodge
the one time I got to go
to the Yellowstone.

Saw the family home at Granger
near the buffalo ranch.
But I missed Old Faithful 'cause
my watch was late.
Smelled those rotten eggs
down at the sulfur springs.

But it was at a Santa Fe bookstore
nearly forty years later when I
found my grandpa,
wearing a duster and Smokey Bear hat,
looking like the law.