Old Doc Brown

Lyrics

[Intro] Ride this train Let me show you a land of rolling hills and tall corn. A land of hard-working people where rewards are often very small This is Pella, Iowa. My mother and father brought me here in 1847. We came from Cork, Ireland. We had a potato famine over there and things had been pretty rough for us. I remember during the potato famine in Ireland, I'd trail along at father's feet and we'd try to find enough potatoes for a meal. And we'd take 'em back in to mother and she'd cook 'em, coats and all. Well, finally we gave up and somehow we made it to America. Well, our new neighbors here in Pella loaned father oxen and ploughs to make his first crop with. And you never saw taller corn that year than it was on our place. The next season, why, we were even lending out ploughs and oxen to other farmers That's the way it was here in the new land. Everybody helped everybody else. If you got sick, everybody came to visit. Even the doctor wouldn't take pay if he thought you couldn't afford it. But old Doc Brown was always there if you ever needed him [Verse 1] He was just an old country doctor in a little country town Fame and fortune had passed him by, though we never saw him frown As day by day in his kindly way, he'd serve us one and all Many a patient forgot to pay although Doc's fees were small [Verse 2] Though he needed his dimes and there were times that he would receive a fee He'd pass it onto some poor soul that needed it worse than he He had to sell his furniture, couldn't pay his office rent So to a dusty room over a livery stable, Doc Brown and his satchel went [Verse 3] And on the hitching post at the curb below to advertise his wares He nailed a little sign that read "Doc Brown has moved upstairs" One day, he didn't answer when they knocked upon his door Old Doc Brown was lying down, but his soul was no more [Verse 4] They found him there in that old black suit, on his face was a smile of content But all the money they could find on him was a quarter and a copper cent So they opened up his ledger and what they saw gave their hearts a pull Beside each debtor's name, old Doc had writ these words: "Paid In Full" [Verse 5] Old Doc should've had a funeral fine enough for a king It's a ghastly joke our town was broke and no one could give a thing 'cept Jones the undertaker, he did mighty well Donating an old iron casket he had never been able to sell [Verse 6] And the funeral procession, it wasn't much for grace and pomp and style But those wagon loads of mourners, they stretched out for more than a mile We wanted to give him a monument, we kinda figured we owed him one Because he made our town a better place for all the good he'd done [Verse 7] We pulled up that old hitchin' post where Doc had nailed his sign We'd painted it white and to all of us, it certainly did look fine Now, the rains and the snows have washed away our white trimmings of paint There aren't nothing left but Doc's own sign and that's getting pretty faint [Verse 8] But you can still see that old hitching post, as if an answer to our prayers Mutely telling the whole wide world "Doc Brown has moved upstairs"