A good indication of how deeply Woody Guthrie affected my life is that I grew up the son of two college professors in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the first time I saw the Columbia River Gorge I was riding a flatcar on a freight train.

I’ve written about that trip in my posts for “Roll on, Columbia” and “Vigilante Man,” and the gorge was gorgeous, but as far as I remember I’ve still never seen the Grand Coulee Dam.

As for the song, I feel like I’ve known it forever. I don’t remember when I got the record I learned it from, but it would have been back when my mom was still required for that purpose, and fortunately was more than willing to feed myhabit. I just checked and found that  the LP I had was issued in 1967,   as the first of a cheaper line of Folkways records that had glossy covers and lacked the enclosed booklets that were standard in their main line of albums.

The song was one of the two dozen Woody wrote in 1941 on commission for the Department of the Interior, celebrating the Bonneville Power Administration, and apparently intended for the soundtrack of a documentary film. They included some of his best compositions: “Pastures of Plenty,” “Roll On, Columbia,” and “Talking Columbia,” with its great line, “Now, I don’t like dictators none, but I think the whole country oughta be run by ee-lectricity.”

Actually, looking at the list, some of the songs don’t have much to do with the Bonneville Power Administration. “Ramblin’ Round” is about the troubles of the Dust Bowl refugees, and “Hard Travelin’” is about all sorts of folks out on the road.

I’ve posted about a couple of those already, with more to come, but had passed over this one because, frankly, I’ve become skeptical about its message. The patriotism makes some sense in the context of World War II, but I grew up in the Vietnam era and was never much taken by lines like “there stands a towering fortress in the fight for Uncle Sam.” And that was before I read Cadillac Desert, which left me permanently disenamored with the big Western dam projects. And the defense of fortress USA has gotten uglier and uglier through most of my lifetime, and if I sometimes feel a twinge of nostalgia for Woody’s patriotism, for the idea of a “simpler time,” I just have to reread my post for “Roll On, Columbia,” which recalls the generally omitted verse celebrating the genocide of northwestern Natives.

All of which said, I’m posting this because this is a memoir project as well as a celebration, and this song is part of my life. The fact that I’ve carried it in my head for more than fifty years is evidence it’s a well-written lyric, and it’s set to a great tune Woody borrowed from the “Wabash Cannonball.” So here it is, a historical artifact, both personal and general, which — if I don’t overthink it — is still a lot of fun to sing.

Oh, yes, and… while preparing this post I found that the Department of the Interior documentary including snatches of Woody’s Columbia River songs is now online, and is pretty interesting: