Fair and Tender Ladies

Come all you fair and tender ladies

Be careful how you court young men.

They're like a star in a summer's morning,

First appear and then they're gone.

If I'd a-knowed afore I courted

That love, it was such a killin' crime,

I'd a-locked my heart in a box of golden

and tied it up with a silver line.

For Josh and Page

Little Luther Wade just sits out there in the porch swing swaying back and forth with his new suspenders on, a little bitty old shriveled-up man so short that his feet in the cowboy books can't even touch the floor.

It's surrounded by a chain link fence, fronted by the observation deck with redwood benches which fill up every summer night at sunset with those who have paid the extra $4.50 to be here, to sit in this cool misty hush while the shadows lengthen from the three mountains - Hoot Owl, Snowman, and Hurricane - while the night settles in, to be here when dark comes and the wind and the laughter start, to see it with their own eyes when that rocking chair starts rocking and rocks like crazy the whole night long.