Old Jim Dill
Words and Music by Bobby Angel
Old Jim Dill was a friend of mine, a hermit who live at the end of the line.
A man who didn’t have a lot to say. An man who died but never went away.
He kept his medals and he kept his gun, when returned at the end of World War I. But somehow things weren’t the same, so he left it all behind and he went away. Into the swamp to the end of the road, where he build him a cabin and called it home. ‘Coon and a gator he kept as a pet. Orneriest man you’ve ever met.
Old Jim Dill was a friend of mine, a hermit who lived at the end of the line.
Didn’t say much didn’t have a phone. Wonder if he ever felt alone.
Didn’t change at all and then it changed real fast, the new guard breaking away from the past. They chopped the trees and dug the earth, with not a care for what it was worth. Hated to see what he saw, but so goes the swamp under frontier law. Where fending yourself to stay safe, meant pointing a riffle in somebody’s face..
Old Jim Dill was a friend of mine, the hermit who lived at the end of the line. Guarded his home with a gun and a horse, ‘til the day he was killed by a snake on his porch. Venom punctured through his hide, finally killed the pain inside. Comforted by a nurse at his bed who held his hand to the very end.
Old Jim Dill is a friend of mine, think about him when I pass the sign.
Dead end then and a dead end to most, haunted by Jim Dill’s ghost.
