hankwlliamsjr

A few days ago I was in a store looking at smokers (as in meat, not cigarettes) trying to decide on a new model. I developed an interest in the Big Green Egg ceramic cookers about five years ago and it has since blossomed into either a passionate hobby or expensive obsession, depending on whether you are talking to me or my wife.

Anyway, the Muzak in the store was playing “country classics,” I suppose you would say, none of which I was paying attention to until an old familiar song my college roommate used to wear out on our cassette deck came on:

The preacher man says it’s the end of time
And the Mississippi River she’s a goin’ dry
The interest is up and the stock market’s down
And you only get mugged if you go downtown

It was Hank Williams, Jr. singing “A Country Boy Can Survive,” which (the miracle that is Google tells me in 0.37 seconds) was released in 1981.

My first concern was that ol’ Hank couldn’t find a way to make “Interest rates are up” work in the third line. “The interest is up”? What does that mean? I mean – c’mon – mine was right there!

But I quibble.

The thing that really stood out to me about that song was how appropriate Hank’s lyrics could have been today (except, of course, for the high interest rates). In fact, as I dug deeper into the history of the song, I learned it has actually had three different iterations in the past three decades.

Here’s the opening verse from the version that was released in anticipation of the CERTAIN DOOM THAT WAS OTHERWISE KNOWN AS Y2K:

Computer man says it’s the end of time
December 31st 1999
People buyin’ up all the surplus things
Afraid of what the New Year will bring

Seems kind of quaint now, doesn’t it?

And then there was the version that was released after 9/11, which is decidedly more rousing:

People think it’s nearly the end of time
Cause we’re together and we’ve drawn the line
Our flag is up, the stock market’s down
But we’re all united from the country to the town

So what can we discern from the fact that Hank Williams Jr. was able to parlay an apocalyptic song written in 1981 into three different iterations spread over 20 years? (I mean, besides the fact that it must be a seriously catchy tune.)

Three things, I think:

1. Doom-and-gloom is a recession-proof business. If we aren’t worried about today, we’re worried about tomorrow, and there are always plenty of people around to help make sure we’re worried.

2. It always seems worse today, in real time, because we worry about all the unknowns as well as the knowns. In retrospect we can see that Y2K was no big deal and 9/11 was a very big deal. But in real time every potential crisis seems like a big deal.

3. From despair comes defiance, and sooner or later that quality galvanizes us and pulls out of the quagmire. Until, inevitably, we let our guard down, forget our lessons and have to learn them all over again. It is a cycle as inherent to humans as the seasons are to nature.

It occurs to me that Hank hasn’t gotten to the 2008/09 version of “A Country Boy Can Survive,” so I want to go ahead and get my own version down ASAP before he comes around for Version 4.0. So here goes:

Talking heads say it’s the end of time
Cause the budget deficit’s gone sky-high!
TARP & TALF are the words today
And we’re printing tons of money in the U-S-A!!!

Here’s hoping that seems as quaint in ten years as the Y2K version does today…