Big Rock Candy Mountain
Harry McClintock
It drove me nuts trying to find a matching set of words and audio for this. I started out with Harry McClintck's words and audio but the audio was very poor. I was more familiar with the Burl Ives version, and I had the words from the Pete Seeger songbook American Favorite Ballads. I found the audio by Pete Seeger. The words mostly match, but not in the same order. It's all rather silly.
Introduction
One summer’s day in the month of May
A burly bum came a-hikin’
Down a shady lane through the sugar cane
He was lookin’ for his likin’
As he strolled along he sang a song
Of a land of milk and honey
Where a bum can stay for many a day
And he don’t need any money
Chorus
Oh, the buzzing of the bees
In the cigarette trees
By the soda water fountain
By the lemonade springs
Where the bluebird sings
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
You never change your socks
And the little streams of alcohol
Come trickling down the rocks
The brakemen have to tip their hats
And the railway bulls are blind
There's a lake of stew and of whiskey too
You can paddle all around it in a big canoe
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
Chorus
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
All the cops have wooden legs
And the bulldogs all have rubber teeth
And the hens lay soft-boiled eggs
The boxcars all are empty
And the sun shines every day
Oh I'm bound to go where there ain't no snow
Where the rain don't fall, the winds don't blow
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.
Chorus
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains,
The jails are made of tin.
And you can walk right out again,
As soon as you are in.
There ain't no short-handled shovels,
No axes, saws nor picks,
I'm bound to stay where you sleep all day,
Where they hung the jerk that invented work
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.
Chorus
Oshi
It was the Saturday of the Chopped festival, when thousands of rev heads bring their prized custom cars to the Newstead Racecourse Reserve. Late in the afternoon, news came to the pub that a 7-year old boy had been hit by a car and airlifted to Melbourne.
There was a rumour that the driver of the car was a local. Nobody had details. Over the rest of the weekend, more rumours flitted around until about the middle of the day on Sunday, when I found out the identity of the boy and the driver. Both were locals.
The boy was Oshi, his father, Ruben, his mother, Lisa, the driver, Phill.
News also came that Oshi was on life support.
On Monday, while I was at work in Melbourne, I got a phone call from Peter Ferguson, a close friend of Ruben and Lisa. He was at the hospital. He was distraught but he managed to give me the information that Oshi was still on life support, but Lisa and Ruben had decided he would be an organ donor, so they didn't know exactly how long until they turned off the life support.
Would I do the service when the time came.
Of course I would.
Big Rock Candy Mountain was Oshi’s favorite song and it was played at his funeral.
On Tuesday, Ruben's father, Michael, phoned me to say the life support had been turned off and that Oshi had died. Somehow, we made arrangements for me to meet with Lisa and Ruben on Friday afternoon, after the coroner had released Oshi's body.
On Wednesday, Heather rang me to ask how I was. She told me she wanted to go around to Phill and Jill's but she wasn't sure. I was very sure that going was important, just to let them know of the support that Phill and his family had from the rest of us. I was still in Melbourne for work. If I had been in Newstead, I would have gone. I resented having to be away.
I left work early on Thursday to come back to Newstead. It was comforting to be home, to be close to the community at this awful time. I saw Heather. She did go to see Phill and Jill, and she was glad she did. I went to the pub, comforted by familiar faces.
That night, I was restless, thinking of the parents whose little boy had given them his last hug. Thinking of my own son, and how his last words to me were, "I love you, Mum." Thinking, too, of the huge responsibility that I had been entrusted with, but also of the privilege I felt. Those feelings would only intensify over the next few days.
