Streets of Laredo

While working on my computer this morning, I turned on my itunes and clicked on Marty Robbins' "Streets of Loredo," a song I have listened to numerous times before. It begins with such sad, mournful sounds and goes into a sad song about a young cowboy who is dying and wants a drink of cool water before he dies. The song has always been one that I have liked, as we grew up around cowboys, but this morning it struck me as so very sad that tears started pouring from my eyes. There were the lines of mothers who, throughout history, have tenderly raised their sons and kissed them good bye as they went off -- young greenhorns off to seek their fortune. Sons they would never see again. Sons they knew were likely to be foolish risk takers, sons they knew they probably would never see again. Then, there is the line of sons who died unmourned, far from home. So many lives. So much sadness.