FISHTRAP HOLLOW, Miss. — When I was little, Stuart Hamblen’s song “This Ole House” always made me unutterably sad.
Despite the lively melody and cheerful beat, the homeowner was giving up, leaving his faithful hound dog to fend for itself. No longer was the master of This Ole House inclined to fix the doors or oil the shingles or mend the window panes. He was, he said, “getting ready to meet the saints.”
Even as a tot, I somehow knew that meant he was dying. The best clue was the angel “peeking through the broken window pane.”
Most all the songs we heard as children were maudlin, same as our fairy tales were grim. Your ship sank, your dog ran away and dying cowboys wrapped in white linen littered the streets. Your grandfather’s clock stopped short, and the old man died. There was nothing you could do about it except sing along loudly.
But the old house song is one I think of often, mostly when I stray too long from the hollow. My old farmhouse in this cold, dark place seems to know when I’ve been cheating with a newer model or a better climate. It calls me back.
This time, while I was enjoying the balmy 20-degree weather on the coast, my old house sat lonely and accusing in the single-digit cold. It punished me with a frozen pipe that burst — into tears — when it thawed.
And so here I am, paying the plumber and the piper, making amends to this old house. With a fire in the stove, gas back in the propane tank, three electric heaters running up the power bill, this old house is tolerably warm. If you sit in the kitchen by the wood fire, it’s downright cozy.
With the frozen pipe plugged, that only leaves the leaking faucet in the kitchen sink, the toilet’s shaky stance, the sagging ceiling in the bedroom and a floor as thin as onion skin. There’s always something to fix, paint, replace or ignore.
It’s enough to make you sing a sad song.
But unlike Hamblen’s fleeing narrator, I’m not ready to meet any saints — or other sinners for that matter. I hope to be around to fix the doors and oil the shingles for a long time yet.
My friend Robert Clay, in fact, recently mended the broken window pane next to my desk, the one that funneled cold air into the room while I tried to write.
Singing cowboy Hamblen claimed he was hunting with a companion when he found a dead prospector and an emaciated hound in a remote cabin in the woods. He said he wrote this song as an elegy. The moral here, if there is one, may be that behind every sad story is a sad story.
One account I read said Hamblen’s hunting companion that fateful day was John Wayne. Hamblen ran in impressive circles. Billy Graham once said Hamblen’s conversion sparked the phenomenal interest in the Billy Graham Crusades. I guess if you convert a well-known singing cowboy prone to drinking, the rest is gravy. You can’t buy that kind of advertising.
If Hamblen and the Duke really did find a dead man and a starving dog while hunting, it was manna from heaven. Everyone still sings that song.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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