My Father, Robert Leslie Waters, circa 1945
My father always wanted to be Hank Williams.
All throughout my childhood the strains of “Kaw-Liga,” “Lonesome Whistle,” and “I Saw the Light” filled our house as my father used these dream songs to lighten the drudgery of his life as a postal worker.
When the annual Post Office talent show was held, there was my father up on a makeshift stage, transformed.
He became Hank.
Hank the country music singer. — Telling hillbilly jokes like a rising star at the Grand Ole Opry.
Hank the meteoric talent. — Whose star streaked across the Southern sky in five short years before falling back to earth, dead of heart failure at age 29 in the back seat of his car.
This past weekend, Jim and I made a pilgrimage to the places in Montgomery where Hank Williams’ legend still can be seen. — His statue by the Alabama River. The markers that tell about his life and music. The baby blue Cadillac in which he died so young.
It felt like revisiting my father, gone now these past 44 years.
Robert Craig Waters 