DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker says about the boyhood home of John A. Lomax, out in Bosque County. Now, if you drive out to that homesite today, you won't find much.
Just a log kitchen. That's all that's left standing to mark the place where one of the foremost collectors of American folksongs first opened his ears to the world. But what a world it was to open them to.
See, this land sat on part of the Chisholm Trail. Which means young John Lomax didn't have to go looking for music. The music came to him — bawling and dusty and restless, moving right past his front door.
Cowboys crooning and yodeling to herds that didn't much want to settle down. That sound drifted over to a boy who was paying attention. And it wasn't just the trail.
The Negro servants in the household taught him jig tunes, chants, work songs, and calls. Music that carried the weight of labor and life in every note. And then on winter nights — you can almost picture it — the family gathered around a blazing fire, singing songs and swapping stories until the dark outside didn't seem quite so dark.
Lomax didn't just absorb all of this. He started writing it down. While he was still a boy.
Now that right there tells you something about the kind of mind he had. Most kids are just living their days. This one was already trying to hold onto them.
When he finally left Bosque County — at age twenty — he didn't leave empty-handed. He carried with him a roll of cowboy ballads. Just a roll of paper.
But the marker calls it what it truly was: the nucleus of his lifelong work. One log kitchen. One boy with his ears wide open.
And a roll of ballads that turned out to be the beginning of something much bigger than Bosque County could hold.
What the marker says
Only a log kitchen now marks the homesite of John Lomax, one of the foremost collectors of American folksongs. Here, on part of the Chisholm Trail, young Lomax heard cowboys crooning and yodeling to restless herds; Negro servants taught him jig tunes, chants, work songs, and calls; and on winter nights his family sang songs and swapped stories around a blazing fire. Lomax began to write down this music while still a boy; and when he left Bosque County at age 20, he carried with him a roll of cowboy ballads -- the nucleus of his lifelong work. (1970)