The Eighty Year Old Poem

When I was a child, my father occasionally recited lines from a poem he remembered as a child. He didn’t recall where he saw it, but when pressed he believed he might have read it in a newspaper and memorized it. I researched this poem extensively to see if I could trace it back to a source, but my efforts yielded no results. The poem doesn’t seem to be published anywhere online. I asked my father if it was possible that someone he knew wrote the poem, and he said it could have been written down for him by a friend.

He was born in 1919 and estimated he was approximately ten years old when he first read it. I recall hearing my father recite the poem to me at an even younger age. As a boy, I enjoyed its whimsical nature, complete with a moral for us at its end. As I grew older, I wondered why my father enjoyed this story so much he committed it to memory. Did he like the idea of speeding down the road, racing any other car in his way? Was it the whimsical telling of the tale, amusing enough to force a chuckle or two throughout?

I never actually knew, because at 90 years old, he couldn’t recall why he wanted to remember it, other than because he enjoyed it. I asked him to recite it, however, and the words flowed. Time didn’t erode his memory of this fine story, even if the details were now a little fuzzy. I asked my father if he could recite it slowly enough to transcribe, and he happily agreed. Because it is so clever and quirky, I decided to post it here. The words to this presumably untitled poem go:

There was a man in our town that had some cash laid by

He wished to live in style before his time should come to die.

He bought the finest car in town, a big and fussy eight;

He said he would then go to church without arriving late.

He started down a country road to see how it would run

He rolled along at twenty-five, and oh but it was fun!

Soon a six went speeding by and left him in the dust

When then a four went racing by which just seemed more unjust.

While the insult from these two were working on his mind

A Model-T went rattling by and left him far behind.

Could a big and fussy eight let such an insult pass?

Just to show them who he was, he stepped upon the gas.

When he passed the four and six, he could not then tell which

When his speed was eighty-five he landed in the ditch!

When people saw the awful wreck they shook their heads and said

Another fool who had no sense is numbered among the dead.

The moral to this story is still worth remembering, nearly a century later. Buckle up, my friends—it’s a wild ride!