He certainly had a few geographic hits, didn’t he? “By the Time I Get to Phoenix.”
The geographic location here is a bit iffy. He mentions that he drew the inspiration in the Oklahoma Panhandle, but there is no Wichita County in Oklahoma. Not far from there is Wichita County TX, which contains the city Wichita Falls, TX and is famous for tornadoes as well as the world’s littlest skyscraper.. There’s also a Wichita County in Kansas, but the city of Wichita is in Sedgwick County.
I always assumed Wichita KS and he’s working for the county (Sedgwick).
The singer misses his wife or girlfriend or whatever…for all we know he’s gay. But it’s absence by design.
My dad used to drive trucks and he loved it. He’d be gone weeks at a time while mom raised the kids. I think he was a lone wolf. Mom wanted babies, ok. Needed money to run the house, ok. But he could only handle so much togetherness and that was the deal they settled on. I could see someone like dad having to reassure mom that he did love her but he needed to do the job etc. He cared, didn’t want to lose her, but couldn’t give her everything she wanted, either.
The lines “I know I need a small vacation but it don’t look like rain/And if it snows that stretch down south won’t ever stand the strain” sound like rationalizing to me. “If the weather gets bad, I may have to take off (rain). Unless I can’t (snow).”
Wait, Wichita?
Train don’t run out of Wichita…less’n your a hog or a cattle.
Planes, Trains, Automobiles with Owen