We’re all suffering the loss of those talking horses that once filled our living rooms, where they versed beautiful recitations of the colored ages that came before and so near us. The lack of their testimonies will broaden the searches for truth considerably. I’m afraid we’ve taken for granted a great benefactor of wisdom. And by not listening closely, we’ve allowed a lot of it to be buried with them…
At the writing of ‘Bonita and Bill Butler,’ I’d had the fine pleasure of rediscovering some local history in and around my home in Louisiana. Webster Parish is embedded with vast watershed of sloughs and swampy bottoms. The picturesque stills are breathtaking to say the least, but the canopies of Cypress and Spanish moss in their uniqueness are but a shroud veiling an even grander expanse beneath. It was here in the safe shadows of the Button willows and Palmettos that I discovered volume upon volume, ancient chronicle, who’s pages were scored by human entry, revealing a heritage, rich as the black earth that cover them.
‘Bonita’ is the actual the name for one of many packet steamboats that made regular passage from Red River up Loggy Bayou into Lake Bistineau. She served the Port of Overton near Dixie Inn, Louisiana in the early to mid 1800’s. The town of Overton itself was made up of cotton warehouses, and hosted only a small number of residents at the time. It has long since been removed due to a Yellow Fever epidemic, and the surviving residents were relocated to higher ground in a place today called Minden.
The character ‘Billy Butler’ was inspired in part by the tragic story Captain George Remer, who along with his seven-year old daughter Cordelia, became unfortunate casualties of the Overton epidemic. I visited the cemetery a while back to see her grave, and read these words on the headstone of the Dr. H.S. Newman, the attending physician at the time…
"THE SCULPTURED MARBLE-
THE ACCORDING TOMB
SHALL MOLDERING PERISH-
IN THE LAPSE OF TIME;
BUT WITH THY FRIENDS
THY NAME SHALL LIVE
WHILE MEMORY LASTS
AND PITY HAS A TEAR’"
-Sidney Cox
"Bonita and Bill Butler" Lyrics
Sidney Cox
I grew up in the scantling yards of Wheeling West Virginia
A wheelhouse cub looking for an open door
In the packet ways a Sweeney wed the keel of my Bonita
Just two months from her timbers til she moored
I paid the fare in billet on her maiden voyage to Vicksburg
And talked my way to hand the tiller on the course
In her planks I carved a notch and sealed the vow “Be my Bonita”
And her dowry was my life between the shores
I was born with rouging ways, and she steered me like a woman
From the port calls and the bawds that lead me stray
The calliope serenades, made the old towns come running
And the boys would gamble shards to pull her chains
The striker’s boast would fain me loss, about the wrecks the shoals were keeping
And how the old girl’s got poor Billy’s ransom saved
On the lake at Bistineau, she set the wharf at Dixie
With a thousand bales of cotton on her main
As the great raft disappeared, the watermark went sinking
And she was stuck right hard, a listing on the bank
With the furnace still a blaze, I stood my last upon her
Then climbed the prow and took a landsman’s trade
“A derelict now Malady” said the watch log I’ve concorded
“Have the bosun sound us eight bells for the change”
Cause I was born with rouging ways, and she steered me like a woman
From the port calls and the bawds that lead me stray
The calliope serenades, made the old towns come running
And the boys would gamble shards to pull her chains
And I would take to wider walks, so the gin I stopped a drinking
At three scores aloft this crooked frame
The striker’s boast would fain me loss, about the wrecks the shoals were keeping
And how the old girl’s got poor Billy’s ransom saved