I heard Hiram King Williams for the first time in the difficult Spring of 1987. His voice was calling through a tinny PA outside of a makeshift chapel at Truckers’ World, Shepherdsville, Kentucky. I was a struggling newbie with Builders Transport, over the road now for the first time. I’d left my local straight truck gig to chase the big money. It hadn’t worked out as planned. I was 28 years old with five mouths to feed and $7 cash on hand. All I had left for shoes were my old brown wing tips, worn down at the heel so badly they were hobbling me.
People steal, they cheat and lie, for wealth and what it will buy;
But don’t they know on the judgment day, that gold and silver will melt away?
I’d rather be in a deep dark grave and know that my first soul was saved
Than to live in this world in a house of gold, and deny my God and doom my soul.
I drew up close to the PA’s speaker and closed my eyes to hear better, as one who had just chanced upon his own biography. When the song ended, I opened my eyes. On the threshold of the crude sanctuary stood a man in a light blue shirt and grey polyester slacks, like a workingman in his best clothes.
“That’s Hank Williams,” he said, chuckling. “Chapel’s in fifteen minutes. We’d love to have ya.”
“You sing these kind of songs in there?” I asked.
“Sure do,” the chaplain said, walking back inside.
I listened. A different song, with different singers. Two with a soulful gravitas that easily rivaled Hank. The chaplain was back outside again, moving some things around.
