Bill Moeller Commentary: Is Ancient Paratrooper Growing Soft and Maudlin in Old Age?

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The other morning, while washing breakfast dishes at the sink, an old song started running through my head. Remember “Old Shep,” you fellow codgers? It was first recorded by Red Foley back in 1935, two years after he had written it.

Yep, I remembered the song, but started drawing a blank on most of the lyrics after the first couple of lines. By the way, a lot of other singers liked it well enough to record it, too: Hank Snow, Johnny Cash, Walter Brennan and even Elvis, among others.

But what were those forgotten lyrics? Wikipedia to the rescue! I started to read them, and then it happened. As I read, my eyes began stinging and puddling up. I wasn’t crying, mind you. I wasn’t. Really. Although Zelda jumped into my lap to see why I was making those funny noises. 

It’s strange, but it never created that same reaction 70 years ago when Bob Muntz and I used to sing it on the school bus some mornings. That was a remarkable bus; there was lots of singing. I’m sure that’d be forbidden today. Some of us were old enough to have already been recruited into various church choirs; the rest looked forward to the one hour a week when we got to request songs out of “The Golden Book of Song.”

Even the bus driver chimed in on his favorites, and someone always saw to it that one of those just happened to be begun. By good fortune he was also our teacher starting in the sixth grade, when our original two-room school was in the basement of our church.

That driver, Mr. Kirsten, was beloved by all who knew him, old and young. Unfortunately, those in our class didn’t have his guidance in our last years, because he died before we graduated.

There’s not enough room here to print the whole song, which began this column, but you can easily find it online. Just type in “Lyrics, Old Shep.”



I’ll tell you what: I’ll meet you at Denny’s some morning, and if you can recite or even read the lyrics of all seven verses without the assistance of a hankie or back of a sleeve, I’ll pay for your senior breakfast! This offer is limited to two participants. 

Oh, I wanted to add that since I’d mentioned my old buddy, Bob, I should at least send him a first draft of this column. He emailed me back immediately, and confessed that every time he sang the song around the house, his wife, Shirley, cried.

I’ll admit, there’ve been several instances in my life where my eyes have puddled up. They all coincided with carrying a beloved pet into a veterinary facility to put a terminally ill companion “to sleep.” What a strange phrase that is, “put to sleep.” Wouldn’t “to kill a friend” be closer to it? If you’ve ever had to do it, isn’t it pretty close to how you felt?

There was Lady, a collie-chow mixture that a friend rescued and convinced us to bring with us when we moved into Lewis County over 55 years ago. We never regretted it. Like Shep, she eventually became old, and our favorite veterinarian, Dr. Werty, said that an episode she’d had a few days earlier may have been a stroke and she lost her sense of direction, because one day instead of moving away from my pickup as I was backing out of the driveway she walked right into the back of my front wheel. The bump broke my heart. OK, dammit, I cried.

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Bill Moeller is a former entertainer, mayor, bookstore owner, city council member, paratrooper and pilot living in Centralia. He can be reached at bookmaven321@comcast.net.