(Here is the opening of Ian Frazier's ballad.)
Click title to hear:
The Ballad
of Don and Dan
From news items, 1984-1985
(excerpt)
Donald Boone Nichols, fifty-three,
and his son Dan, nineteen,
(It was an idea, a man had an idea,
It was an idea, and it didn't work)
Living in the Madison Mountains in Montana,
Two rifles, two pistols, hats greased against the rain,
red beans, matches to last three hundred years,
a padlock, a dog chain
(It was an idea, a man had an idea,
It was an idea, and it didn't work)
Don, who used to work for Union Carbide, foretold,
"Someday, Danny, we'll be a tribe. A small one,
something that wouldn't get too big--
the ideal number would be twelve"
(It was an idea, a man had an idea,
It was an idea, and it didn't work)
Waiting, Don and Dan, waiting by a logging road
laying their sleeping bags across a logging road,
waiting for a woman who was mixed up and didn't think for herself. . .