Tom shines a light on the strange fruit swinging by America’s tracks of hatred

The Painted Desert is about 300 miles from Vegas. If you ride there on the back of a Greyhound it takes 13 hours. Unlucky 13.

13 steps to death in Gallows Town, 13 whispered lies against God.

The Painted Desert is in the badlands of Arizona and leads eventually into the Petrified Forest. Route 66 once took you there, now it is buried under the dust.

But if you are brave enough to go, you will find yourself driving headlong into the depths of your personal sense of humanity.

Tom Wood lives 24 miles from the glitz of Vegas with the ‘destiny’ woman it took him so many decades to find.

He spent a lot of time in Red Rock Canyon in the painted Mojave Desert where once there stood an old telephone box … it used to be said that it had one pre-paid call waiting for anybody who got lost there.

You could either phone home or the next station on your own freedom road.

Freedom Road is a mythological network of hope and escape. And that’s the road Tom – an old blues man now – has been on ever since his time began in the 1950’s flames and burning altars of St Louis.

Tom is a contented man since his destiny, Tamara, waltzed back in to his life after a meeting arranged by some musician friends.

But before their ‘beautiful encounter’ his journey had taken him headlong into his own sense of humanity.

Tom has been to the deserts, the dark forests and the badlands. And in there he found the trail to his Freedom Road.

Although Tom says he was never affected by the racism of St Louis in his formative years the endless rows of dead black bodies and the terror of the white horsemen are never far from his boot heels. They snap like dead dogs.

Tom’s Freedom Trail smacks of a mythological underground railway that began in North Carolina and from there it had many dark shadowy stations. But no end.

And the bodies of all the lynched black people would stretch from Vegas to the Painted Desert and back again. Over and over. Over and over.

And their miserable ghosts still shake the strange fruit in the Petrified Forest and ring them bells of St Louis.

Tom’s Freedom Trail is an indelible link between racism, death and freedom and is masterfully told.

Howard Fast’s Freedom Road revealed just how iniquitous American society can be, a society that allowed the Ku Klux Klan to employ terrorism to keep the black labour force in slavery.

And in 1951, just before Tom was born, Fast wrote one of his best-known novels, Spartacus … the story of a slave’s battle for the dignity of life.

Freedom Trail is another brave step down that road.

LISTEN HERE …

FREEDOM TRAIL

People lives are at stake you don’t mess with it (sing 4 times)
A shelter for fugitives on the run
Those homes are stations for a railroad
Watch for a signal to move on
Move along the underground railroad”
” Big dipper praise the north star
Bright beacon telling you where you are
Moving downwind out of sight
Moving north through the twilight”
CHORUS > ” If you wanna go run faster than the wind
                       A conductor leads your way
                       Moving closer to freedom everyday”
” Freedom trails freedom trails
Glorious rails of the railroad
That freight you’re carrying to freedom
They are the ones who live to tell the tale”
REPEAT CHORUS>
” People lives are at stake, you don’t mess with it ” (sing 4 times)

People lives are at stake you don’t mess with it (sing 4 times)
A shelter for fugitives on the run
Those homes are stations for a railroad
Watch for a signal to move on
Move along the underground railroad”
” Big dipper praise the north star
Bright beacon telling you where you are
Moving downwind out of sight
Moving north through the twilight”
CHORUS > ” If you wanna go run faster than the wind
A conductor leads your way
                       Moving closer to freedom everyday”
” Freedom trails freedom trails
Glorious rails of the railroad
That freight you’re carrying to freedom
They are the ones who live to tell the tale”
REPEAT CHORUS>
” People lives are at stake, you don’t mess with it ” (sing 4 times)

VISIT

TW (mongomon.com)

#tomwood #bobmori #mongomon #freedomtrail #racismdead #stlouis #painteddesert #grandcanyon #mojave