He was a poor, wayfaring stranger

travelling through this world of woe

But even poor, wayfaring strangers

need a place where they call home.

For him, twas in Southern Illinois

a city that wasn't one,

near a larger village

by which the Embarass did flow.

Here the great, old white-haired songbird came of age,

But before he was the Wayfaring Stranger

did Big Daddy make his first million as the Grit boy?

The stranger seemed to cover lots of ground,

sometimes a holly-jolly snowman

his name synonmous with the Yuletide.

Sometimes a blustering antebellum patriarch

or a thundering frontier baron feuding endlessly over

The Big Muddy.

Sometimes a bold champion of justice

for an hour each third Sunday.

In this big little town near the stranger's home

his songs are slightly remembered in

the back of the local library,

amid the old ladies' hats and the cigar sign

from the long lost local hotel.

Where even the old record albums look modern.