As part of our practicing, he helped me finish a song I had already mostly written, "Maggie Was a Boozer". Then we collaborated on a silly song based on my brother John. John had moved to Alaska in the 1970's to work on the oil pipeline, then remained there.
I don't recall which of us started calling him "Yukon Jack," but the name tickled our fancies and inspired "The Ballad of Yukon Jack".
The Ballad of Yukon Jack
This is the ballad of Yukon Jack
living in the Arctic in a one-room shack.
Moved to the woods to start a new life
trying to escape a nagging wife.
Now he's alone and feeling blue
sitting by the fire warming his shoes.
To keep himself from getting mean,
he dreams of chowing on pork and beans.
This is the ballad of Yukon Jack,
starving in the cold in that one-room shack.
Poor old Jack he's in dire straits,
was forced to eat his fishing bait.
To keep himself warm, burned his last log.
and at dinner time eyed his old sled dog.
To keep himself from getting mean,
he dreams of chowing on pork and beans.
To finish the ballad of Yukon Jack,
the bank repossessed his one-room shack.
A grizzly bear, big brown and mean,
ate his entire supply of pork and beans.
The moral of the story is easily seen:
Never rely just on pork and beans.
If you move to the Yukon, take a stash,
of good old-fashioned American hash.
It might taste awful,
but it's better than eating dog.
Okay, it's not a classic. But it was fun.
We did perform "Maggie," but we never got to inflict "Yukon Jack" on the public.
Sadly, my brother was murdered in 1983 shortly after we wrote the song. And then Dave finished grad school, moved to Texas, and became a teacher, then a principal. He kept trying to get me to move there to teach, but I never did. He died of a heart attack in 2016.
I miss both of them.
Pax et bonum
