I love The Flying Burrito Brothers and their version of “Farther Along” is my all-time favorite. I’ve listened to that song since I was in my 20’s, for almost 40 years now. Am I really that old?! Yes, yes I am, and after the year I just went through, I am ok with that. Actually, more than ok with that. I’m glad I’m that old. It means I am alive.

I’d listened to Gram Parsons sing “Farther Along” with Sneaky Pete’s distinctive pedal steel floating behind Gram’s vocals for years before I realized that they didn’t write it. The Burrito Brothers’ version was the only version I’d heard until 1976 when I took a cross country trip with my friend Carol Anne. Carol Anne was in Vista (remember that?) in Hill City, KS, a tiny town one street town. She was helping to build a community center to give the kids in Hill City somewhere to go, something to do. A local farmer, Ralph, and his wife, Mary, took Carol Anne in while she was there. Their kids were grown and gone and Carol Anne became their surrogate daughter. When I went to meet Carol Anne to start our trip, Ralph and Mary took me in for a bit too.

Carol Anne and I took off in her Pinto on our adventure and sometime during our travels, Carol found out that Ralph had died. How she found out, I can’t remember. We were driving all the backroads of this beautiful country in that Pinto without a plan, hardly any money, and no means of communication while we were on the road. But when she heard about Ralph we headed right back to Hill City to be there for the funeral.

The organist at the church was playing hymns for background music as we all filed into the pews. After the funeral service started, the first song we sang was “Farther Along,”

Tempted and tried we’re often made to wonder
Why it should be thus all the day long
While there are others living about us
Never molested though in the wrong.

Farther along we’ll know all about it
Farther along we’ll understand why
Cheer up, my brother, come sing in the sunshine
We’ll understand it all by and by.

When death has come and taken our loved ones
It leaves our home so lonely and drear
Then do we wonder why others prosper
Living so wicked year after year.

Farther along we’ll know all about it
Farther along we’ll understand why
Cheer up, my brother, come sing in the sunshine
We’ll understand it all by and by.

Faithful till death said our loving master
A few more days to labor and wait
Toils of the road will then seem as nothing
When we sweep through that beautiful gate.

Farther along we’ll know all about it
Farther along we’ll understand why
Cheer up, my brother, come sing in the sunshine
We’ll understand it all by and by
We’ll understand it all by and by.

I had listened to this song thousands of times but it was like I was hearing it for the first time that day. The only instrument was the church organ, not Sneaky Pete’s pedal steel and Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman’s guitars, and the people I was singing with were salt of the earth farmers in cowboy boots, dusty jeans and Stetson hats with flasks of bourbon in their hip pockets, not kids my age in bellbottom jeans and flannel shirts with wire rim glasses and dime bags of pot in their glove compartments.

After the service we all went back to Ralph and Mary’s farm where the women laid out the dishes they’d made. We ate while the men told stories about Ralph. Pretty soon all the men got up, got into their pickup trucks with the rifle racks on the back window, and drove down to the field we could see from the picture window in Mary’s living room. Those good old boys drove around in a circle, shooting their rifles in the air, drinking from their flasks until I felt dizzy and drunk just from watching them. When they came back to the house someone sat down at the piano and started playing “Farther Along” and we all chimed in.

I’ve been listening a lot to The Flying Burrito Brothers recently. One day a few weeks ago I woke up singing “Farther Along,” and since then I’ve been listening incessantly to Hot Burritos! their anthology album. Since Ralph’s funeral, I’ve always thought of “Farther Along” as a song about death. Now, I think about it as a song about life. I am trying to sing in the sunshine and understand it all by and by.

Today, appropriately, is Carol Anne’s birthday. Happy Birthday, Carol Anne.

As always, thanks so much for reading, and remember, don’t trust those mammograms.