The Big Rock Candy Mountain

One of the great joys of parenthood is that you get to return to your own youth. Specifically, to those days when you could listen to a song on repeat. Endlessly.

We're pretty lucky that the girls are young at a time when there are some really fantastic kid albums around. Musicians we love are making music for young'uns. There is the occasional tune that wears thin. Usually that happens when we watch something old with a song that was terrible to begin with. On the whole, the girls have some good music.

The album we've had on repeat recently is a bunch of traditional songs and nursery rhymes from Lisa Loeb. The opening track gets the most play. It's a familiar one.

It's only after one turns a song over in their mind for the fiftieth or hundredth time that you can appreciate when a new insight pops out. I had one of those insights to this song. Unfortunately, it's not been a good one. Now the Big Rock Candy Mountain makes me incredibly sad every time I hear it.

Loeb's is a sanitized version of the song Harry McClintock recorded in 1928. Little more lemonade and a little less alcohol. There's some evidence that McClintock pulled together (and also sanitized) some earlier songs he heard living as a hobo on 19th century trains. It wasn't an easy life to jump from train to train, so the idea of a far away land with crystal fountains was a grand vision.

One evening as the sun went down
And the jungle fires were burning,
Down the track came a hobo hiking,
And he said, "Boys, I'm not turning
I'm headed for a land that's far away
Besides the crystal fountains
So come with me, we'll go and see
The Big Rock Candy Mountains

I was introduced to this song, like so many others, through the Coen Brothers. O Brother, Where Art Thou? works wonderfully as a movie. It works even better as a soundtrack.

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains,
There's a land that's fair and bright,
Where the handouts grow on bushes
And you sleep out every night.
Where the boxcars all are empty
And the sun shines every day
And the birds and the bees
And the cigarette trees
The lemonade springs
Where the bluebird sings
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.

It's a great song to have in a Coen Brothers movie, particularly for their Tennessee Valley translation of the Odyssey. They are directors whose work is about people who are trapped in circumstances beyond their control. These Soggy Bottom Boys are roaming the countryside, moving from a place they're literally trapped - prison - to the promised land - home (and some wealth).

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 farmers' trees are full of fruit
And the barns are full of hay
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.

As you listen to the song, it's widening perspective of a peaceful life for the indigent really takes hold. The joy of being satiated. The freedom. The open days. And no one to answer to.

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

And these are nice things. Simple, but nice. The Mountain is fine, starting with the big rock candy and ending with the little streams of alcohol. It's not aspiring to gluttony, only a simplicity. A desire to have the hard edges rounded out, the thorns removed, and the biggest struggles, well, de-struggled.

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.

And that's when it hits you. There is no freedom or aspiration here. This is about the limit of joy.

The song does not talk about a dream or the most opulent paradise. There is no surprise in the Big Rock Candy Mountain. These are all things that the people know they want, know they need, and the Mountain has it for them. There's nothing unexpected.

From one perspective, this is genuine and sincere. Of course people's imaginations are limited by their exposure, and I am dismissing the virtue of the simple. We should not fault someone whose only desire is a dry place to sleep! How do you even know the things you're missing? Not everyone wants foie gras on their kale salad, hipster. Why should you want a paradise that you don't even recognize? Even the Garden of Eden was defined by its bounty AND its limits. "You can have everything, except..."

From another side, the song laments how poverty and want can shrink a mind. There is no harm in finding one's own happiness. And a lot of happiness has to do with the simple. But this isn't happiness. A place to sleep and things to eat? This song is about survival. This man has been on the road for so long that his absolute dream is to get a night's sleep on a full belly without being harassed. His view of the most glorious place has been drawn in, ground back, and firmly barricaded. As has been said, you can't have "life as it should be" without "life as it is."  He wants to escape the trap that life has been by making it to a promised land. Alas, the promised land is its own trap, one that's built in life.

That is what catches me these days: the narrowing of the target. People are imagining their own exclusive utopias, and that's great. But it is breathtakingly sad to see how those utopia are so tiny and bland. It happens to me too. Easy living would be...repaying student loans.

It's such a narrow view. Given all the utopian things - international fame, endless movies, a swimming pool full of margaritas - knocking out those student loans is just too damn high on the list. Paying oneself out of a hole is so base. It's money, not experience or virtue or anything grander. The Big Rock Candy Mountain needs an awareness trigger. A way to see the limits of this image of paradise. A way to recognize that the good life is so much bigger.

Fortunately, I have two of them. And they're asking to play the damn song again.