It was about a pregnant chambermaid. It was about the shifting skin. It was about a Scottish fisherman. It was about the color orange. It was about busting out of here. It was about your eyelids. It was about loneliness. It was about a homemade kitchen table, blue light at dusk, ice-cold root beer, and selling your car to a stranger. It was about Hank Williams.
myfanwy collins 
Echos of that lonesome whippoorwill.
Goodbye Joe
© Gerard C. Smith
Hank Williams in a Cadillac
Never made that Canton act
He lay down his head and died
Fans by the millions cried
Back seat of that Cadillac
Sure wasn’t a heart attack
It was livin’ wild, livin’ fast
Shootin’ up when he passed
Ole Hank he had his fill
Of lonely mansion on the hill
No jambalaya or crawfish pie
On the day he chose to die
Hank lived the honky-tonk life
Cheated some on his wife
Swilled quarts of brown liquor
OD on horse made it quicker
I was a kid, about fifteen
When old Hank quit the scene
Went to the devil that’s my bet
It’s mine too says daughter Jet
So old Hank went away
Not to return another day
To row a pirogue on the Bayou
He tipped his Stetson and said bye you
Or maybe it was goodbye Joe
I got a row to hoe, gotta go;
I’ll tell it straight, tell it level
I gotta go and meet the devil
So we lament that Hank passed on
We could not believe he was gone
That country songs he’d write no more
Old Hank’s locked behind devil’s door
GCSmith ©2005
*
Note: Nineteen hundred and fifty-three, country singer Hank Williams Sr., 29, died of a drug and alcohol overdose while en route to a concert date in Canton, Ohio.