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Parts of this story sound amazing, even unbelievable, but a truer tale never existed... |
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I WAS CALLED PEDRO by Jeff Prince and Phill
Rodriguez
Billy Nix was born on a 20-acre farm in Parker County and learned how to coax watermelons, cantaloupes and peaches out of the sandy Texas ground. As a young man he fought Germans, and carried shrapnel souvenirs the rest of his life. War was hard, even harder after he got word that his parents and brothers were burned up in a kerosene fire back home. After the war, Billy was restless. He leased out the farm and headed west for a spell, supervising fruit pickers in California. It was in those orange fields he met a beautiful dark-haired girl of 15 named Consuela. Whites and Mexicans seldom married back then, but Billy and Consuela did. They took a bus to Mexico and he handed his new mother-in-law a bolt of gingham and a pouch with 10 silver dollars. As for me, I forced my way into this world in a stucco room with a hard sod floor just south of the Texas border. I was called Pedro. A train carried the three of us to Parker County to continue a tradition of growing melons. And for a while, a short while, our life was sweet as the cantelopes growing yellow in the sun, all neat in a row. In 1948, Pedro gets a baby sister, a perpetually smiling little baby girl named Lolita. The Nix family survives on 20 acres of rolling farmland in northwest Parker County. Billy leases another 120 acres to grow his melons, and earns a reputation as a lovable eccentric for refusing to use the pesticide DDT, which the federal government is just beginning to promote as a safe bug killer. Billy’s insistence on organic farming increases his costs and makes his melons more expensive at market. Yet most people are happy to pay the difference. It’s about this time that Mr. Clark at Veal Station General Store coins the phrase, “A Nix melon is sweeter than peach plum pie.” The motto sticks. |
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POWERED BY LOVE by Jeff Prince
Coyotes crying at a silver
moon
Sister sticks her tongue
out at me Early 1950s: Billy is uncharacteristically ill much of the time, and farming becomes difficult. In the early 1940 during World War II, he had been exposed to mustard gas during a bombing off the coast of Italy. Most of his shipmates were dying from various illnesses, one by one, year after year. At night, Billy flips his hard cane chair upside down, sits on a rabbit skin pallet and leans against the chair’s back -- a poor man's recliner. Pedro and Lolita snuggle by his side while he tells stories, reads the family Bible, and provides gruff bass lines on favorite singalongs such as “Bill Groggan’s Goat” and “Amazing Grace.” On a chilly December night in 1954 he shares advice with his son. |
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NOT SUPPOSED TO STAY DOWN by Jeff Prince
Daddy told me to climb on
his knee
Mama told me, get down
off her knee Late 1950s: Billy Nix is bedridden and no longer able to speak or even feed himself. Consuela attempts to handle chores, raise the two children, and care for her husband, but she slowly becomes unhinged. Her madness overflows on the day Billy dies. She cuts potatoes, celery, and carrots for a stew, dumps a handful of roofing nails into the pot, and then squats in a corner with scissors and slices the children's best clothes. Pedro and Lolita hide in the weed-filled melon patch. In 1961,Parker County auctions the Nix land for back taxes, and the state commits Consuela to Rusk State Hospital and places Lolita with a neighboring family. Pedro refuses to be told where to go or what to do, and he drifts among friends’ houses, even living for a few months in an abandoned barn on the old family farm. |
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HOME by Jeff Prince
Twenty acres never seemed
so big
And home, our home, is
gone 1962: A 15-year-old Pedro borrows a 1949 Ford Econoline and heads to Oregon to become a logger, inspired by a children's book about Paul Bunyan. Cutting trees dulls his pain, eases his mind, and strengthens his body. A logging camp foreman describes young Pedro as “so honest you can play dice with him over the phone.” He plays his daddy's guitar at jamborees, dances, and picnics, and develops a reputation as one of the region's most talented musicians. |
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LASSO THE MOON by Phillip Rodriguez
Left home at 15 headed for
the Northwest 1963: Pedro visits Lolita at her foster home. She is treated well by her new family but carries hidden scars from witnessing her parents’ deterioration. Brother and sister drive to their old farm and walk along a creek path that was once as smooth as asphalt but is now overgrown with wild grasses. “We'll get our home back one day,” Lolita says with such conviction that Pedro doesn't doubt her. They hug and promise to keep in touch, and Pedro points the Econoline south. He settles in Austin, works as a stonemason, and begins making frequent visits to Mexican border towns with co-workers. Eventually, Pedro looks beyond the border and into the country’s heart. |
LAREDO
by Phillip Rodriguez
 I get that
good time feeling every time I cross that Austin City Limit sign
Mid 1960s: Mexico’s beauty and simplicity appeal to Pedro, and his roots take hold in the land of his birth. For two years he rides fence for a ranch owner and learns Mexican guitar from a wiry vaquero named Arana, a virtuoso despite missing a finger (a spider bite infected his left pinky and forced an amputation). Lolita writes to say their mother has hanged herself with an electrical cord at the state hospital. Forgetting his father's advice on adversity, Pedro succumbs to sorrow. A tequila bender ends with him kidnapped into labor in the Mexico mountains. He falls deeply in love with his captor's daughter, Maria, who sneaks food and kisses to him each night. Despite already being betrothed, Maria elopes with Pedro, sparking a manhunt. A drunken posse tries to shoot Pedro and kills the rich man’s daughter by mistake. A falsely accused Pedro flees for Texas. |
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TIERRA MIA by Phillip Rodriguez
Woke up face down on the
wet dirt floor
The sun at my back and the
ride is hard 1965: Pedro crosses the Rio Grande on Negra’s back, and both man and horse fight exhaustion. A bullet has grazed Pedro’s scalp and given him a concussion. Negra goes lame near Eagle Pass and a starved and shivering Pedro builds a fire, cooks and eats the horse that carried him to safety, and mourns for his true love lying dead somewhere deep in Mexico. After his meal, he tumbles into fitful sleep as memories of Maria both sustain and torment him. He awakes and sees a vision of a two-headed rattlesnake coiled beside his bedroll, preparing to strike. The snake speaks: “Do you want to die?” Pedro wonders if his mother’s insanity has come to steal his mind. |
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TE QUIERO BONITA TE AMO by Jeff Prince
Te quiero, bonita, te amo
Te quiero, bonita, te amo 1966-68: Pedro becomes a vagrant who musters an existence by playing guitar on street corners in large Texas cities. Memories of Maria saturate his soul, fueled by wine and the Mexican music that Pedro now plays without exception. On impulse he determines quitting music will help him overcome his grief. He sells his guitar and never plays another note. The money buys whiskey for three days, pushing Pedro farther into a cocoon of depression. |
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HOOKED ON THE BOTTLE by Jeff Prince
There's a hole in the roof with the rain
dripping through
Wake up every morning fresh from a nightmare April 30, 1969: A night in the can is nothing new, but a stint in the Nacogdoches County Jail and a conversation with a philosophical jailer change Pedro. The jailer’s simple message and kindly manner inspire sobriety. Serenity follows. |
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MOMENT OF CLARITY by Jeff Prince
County jailer tells me: “Son, you look like
death
County jailer tells me, “Son, you done your
time June 1969: Nacogdoches becomes Pedro’s new home. The next year he marries a Cajun girl. A son is born. Life is tranquil and Pedro is content, although he frequently envisions Maria’s girlish face and almond brown eyes, and he has silent conversations with her every day. |
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NACOGDOCHES SUNDAY AFTERNOON by Phillip
Rodriguez
Sitting on a sunny Sunday afternoon
Now the day is coming to an end 1972: The humid consistency of summer is jarred when Pedro’s wife leaves town with, of all people, a traveling minister. Pedro continues working as a contract logger at an Angelina County paper company and raising his son, Little Pete. They share a bond stronger than the pine trees Pedro cuts and hauls for a living. Several years pass, when an unexpected telegraph arrives to blow them in a new direction, one that will provide comfort for years. |
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ANGELINA LUMBER by Jeff Prince and Phillip
Rodriguez
Cutting Angelina lumber
Leaving Angelina lumber Prologue: In 1973, Pedro Nix returned to Parker County and settled with Little Pete on the old farm with sister Lolita. The next year, Pedro married a Parker County nurse named Susan Ellis, and the couple shared three devoted decades. Susan buried Pedro in a little cemetery just north of Weatherford on April 11, 2002. Despite rainy conditions, more than 300 people showed up to say goodbye to this good man, who had become a successful oil driller, developer, church deacon, reserve fireman, and loving father of four college-graduated children, until he succumbed to cancer at 55. At the funeral, Susan’s knees sank into the wet grass as she kneeled beside the grave. Tears fell for the man she loved, and for the portion of his heart that she could never capture. Susan alone had heard Pedro's final words, spoken a week earlier in a hoarse whisper as he tossed about, sweaty and delirious in a Fort Worth hospital: “Maria…te amo…my sweet Maria.” |
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| All Songs Copyright © 2004, PrinceRodriguez |
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