“Down in the valley ...”

I hadn’t planned to do a post today. But just now, reading Anne Tyler’s wonderful 1985 novel, The Accidental Tourist (yes, I’ve never read it), I came across this: Our protagonist, musing about San Francisco, thinks this—“...floating on mist like the Emerald City, viewed from one of those streets so high that you really could hang your head over and hear the wind blow” (254).

The final words are from the song “Down in the Valley.” (Link to Burl Ives singing the song.)

And I nearly wept. Here’s why ...

On our family car trips when I was a boy, our father (1913-1999) would always sing that song when we topped a hill and saw a valley below. And when we crossed the state line back into Oklahoma (where we were living), he would lead all of us in singing the title song from the musical Oklahoma!

My father was not just some ordinary singer. He had a wonderful high tenor voice—not just high but a tenor, solid and stable and lovely. (It’s one of his many great qualities I did not inherit!) We have some recordings of him singing Back in the Day: We played his “The Lord’s Prayer” at our son’s wedding (1999), at Dad's own funeral, and my mom’s funeral (2018).

All the Dyers wept.

He was an ordained minister (Disciples of Christ), so we heard him sing in church a lot—both when he was preaching (he often performed a solo—my older brother sometimes on piano), and, later, when he was in the choir.

He was born on a farm in north-central Oregon, and when we went to family reunions, we heard him sing with his (many) brothers and sisters—they all sang wonderfully well.  (Where did that damn gene go!?)

Even when he became infirm, he would sing in the choir at their church in Pittsfield, Mass. (the same church that Melville had attended, the church that poet Richard Wilbur attended).

He couldn’t walk well—couldn’t proceed down the aisle with the other choir members—so when they began their entrance, he would step into his place as they were coming toward him. And then sing like an angel.

One of my fondest memories: When he was lying in the hospital in Pittsfield, near death, several of us were in his room, and one of us said something about the song “The Lassie o’ Mine,” a song he used to sing for Mom.

And, eyes shut in bed, he launched into that song, nailing the high-C at the end. Unwavering, pure, heart-wrenching.  (Link to song; this version ends on a low note ... sigh.)

Need I mention the condition of all the Dyers’ eyes when he finished?

So when I read Anne Tyler’s passage today, I felt myself wing out of the book into the 1950s, into the back seat of the Dyer family car, heading for Oregon, rounding a bend somewhere in, oh, Utah, seeing a valley spread out below us, hearing Dad’s tenor soaring into “Down in the Valley.”

And I had to close Tyler and do this post ...