Lyr Req: I Would Not Be Here (John Hartford)

Subject: Hartford's 'Serendipity' 'I wouldn't be
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 14 Jul 01 - 01:07 PM

I need--today--the text of John Hartford's poem (song?) which I think is called Serendipity. It starts:

I wouldn't be here if I hadn't been there.
I wouldn't been there if I hadn't....

and on and on, tracing causes back and back and back.

I need this, to read at a poetry session tomorrow, Sunday the 15th.

Anybody?

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hartford's 'Serendipity' 'I wouldn't
From: harpgirl
Date: 14 Jul 01 - 01:43 PM

Hi Dave
I think that one is called "I would not be here" from "The Love Album". If I can persuade Nathan to unplug NO MERCY I'll pop it on the turntable and have it for you in time to practice. hapgirl *wink*

Subject: Lyr Add: I WOULD NOT BE HERE (John Hartford)
From: harpgirl
Date: 14 Jul 01 - 02:15 PM

I WOULD NOT BE HERE

by John Hartford

I would not be here if I hadn't been there
And I wouldn't been there if I hadn't just turned
On Wednesday the third in the late afternoon
Got to talking with George who works out in the back
And only because he was getting off early
To go see a man at a Baker Street bookstore
With a rare first edition of steamboats and cotton
A book he would never have sought in the first place

Had he not been inspired
By a fifth grade replacement schoolteacher in Kirkwood
Who was picked just at random
By some man on a school board who couldn't care less
And she wouldn't been working
If not for her husband
Who moved two months prior to work in the office
Of a man he had met
While he served in the army
And only because they were in the same barracks
An accident caused by a poorly made roster
Mixed up on the desk of a Sargent from Denver
Who wouldn't be in but for bein in back
In the car he was ridin before he enlisted that hit a cement truck
and killed both his buddies

But a back seat flew up there and spared him from dyin
And only because of the fault of a workman
Who forgot to turn screws on a line up in Detroit
Cause he hollered at Sam who was hateful that morning
Hungover from drinkin alone at a tavern
Because of a woman he wished he'd not married
He met long ago at a jewish bar mitzvah
For the son of a man who had moved there from Jersey

Who managed a drugstore that sold the prescription
That cured up the illness he caught way last summer
He wouldn't have caught except for some kid
All contagious from fever who sat in his lap
Was the son of a man who sold him insurance
He met at a ........(it trails off)

I think that's right! Love, harpgirl

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hartford's 'Serendipity' 'I wouldn't
From: wysiwyg
Date: 15 Jul 01 - 11:13 AM

refresh

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hartford's 'Serendipity' 'I wouldn't
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 15 Jul 01 - 01:40 PM

Report:

I read this this morning to the poetry session at our church.

I might just put down here the way I introduced it:

"About a month ago a great and much-loved man died, named John Hartford. He said he saw himself mainly as a Mississippi river-boat pilot, but the world knew him as a fine country and traditional musician and singer, songwriter and poet.

"When I saw this poem I jumped on it, because it expresses a thought I've mused on for many years."

The poem was very well received. I have to confess I choked up just a little bit on the introduction.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: I Would Not Be Here/Serendipity (Hartford
From: GUEST,Tom
Date: 16 Feb 06 - 08:48 PM

At shows, at least, he would end it "that cured up the sunburn he caught way last summer ..." and that the last chord he plucked under "summer" ring out.