Old Doc Brown

Johnny Cash

Compositor: Red Foley

Ride this train let me show you a land of rolling hills and tall corn
A land of hard working people where rewards are often very small
This is Pella, Iowa
My mother and father brought me here in 1847, we came from Cork, Ireland

We had a potato famine over there and things had been pretty rough for us
I remember during the potato famine in Ireland, I'd trail along at father's feet
And we'd try to find enough potatoes for a meal
And we'd take em back in to mother and she'd cook em coats and all
Well finally we gave up and somehow we made it to America

Well, our new neighbors here, in Pella, loaned father oxen
And ploughs to make his first crop with
And you never saw taller corn that year than it was on our place
The next season why we were even lendin' out ploughs and oxen to other farms
That's the way it was here in the new land

Everybody helped everybody out if you got sick, everybody came to visit
Even the doctor wouldn't take pay if he thought you couldn't afford it
But old Doc Brown was always there if you ever needed him

He was just an old country doctor in a little country town
Fame and fortune had passed him by, though we never saw him frown
As day by day, in his kindly way, he’d serve us one and all
Many a patient forgot to pay, although Doc's fees were small
Though he needed his dimes and there were times that he'd receive a fee

He'd pass it onto some poor soul that needed it worse than he
He had to sell his furniture, couldn't pay his office rent
So to a dusty room over a livery stable Doc Brown and his satchel went
And on the hitchin' post at the kerb below to advertise his wares
He nailed a little sign that read Doc Brown has moved upstairs

And one day he didn't answer when they knocked upon his door
Old Doc Brown was layin' down, but his soul was no more
They found him there in that old black suit, on his face was a smile of content
But all the money they could find on him was a quarter and a copper cent
So they opened up his ledger and what they saw gave their hearts a pull

Beside each debtor's name old Doc had write these word: S Paid In Full
Old Doc should had a funeral fine enough for a king
It's a ghastly joke our town was broke and no one could give a thing
Cept Jones an undertaker he did mighty well
Donated an old iron casket he had never been able to sell

And the funeral procession it wasn't much for grace and pomp and the style
But those wagon loads of mourners they stretched out for more than a mile
We wanted to give him a monument, we kinda figured we owed him one
Cause he made our town a better place for all the good he'd done
We pulled up that old hitchin' post where Doc had nailed a sign

We'd painted it white and to all of us it certainly did look fine
Now the rains and the snows have washed away our white trimmin's of paint
There ain't nothin' left but Doc's own sign and that's gettin' pretty faint
But you can still see that old hitchin' post as if in answer to our prayers
Mutually tellin' the whole wide world Doc Brown has moved upstairs