Hopping freights, ridin' the sing-song of the rails, the wandering hobo, it's full circle for the legacy of Merle Haggard, the 25 percent of country music's version of Mt. Rushmore, along with Jimmie Rodgers, Bob Wills, and Hank Williams. In addition to the illicit train riders' hobo camps, highway underpasses provided shelter and refuge for the land vagabonds, such as was a young Merle Haggard. A recent Memorial Overpass erected in Haggard's name in Redding, California, though not of museum quality, somehow seems more than fitting for a man who died in his road bus and on his birthday. No better way to sing him back home than an acknowledgement from the rail and asphalt overpasses he traveled so long and the underpasses in his youth that allowed for a welcome retreat.

-- Bryce Martin