Hadn’t seen one like this since Stuart Hamblen drove through Fort Stockton in one on his way to go hunting in the High Sierras.

For you whippersnappers who have no idea who Stuart Hamblen was, just know that beyond his impeccable taste in automobiles made of maple and mahogany, he was a minor movie star and major maker of memorable melodies. That’s right. While most of us struggle to find a single career that we can be called successful in, Hamblen jumped right from making westerns with John Wayne and Gene Autrey into writing songs of note.

He found the Roadmaster Estate in 1947 at a dealership in Hollywood, and God in 1949 at a Billy Graham Revival. It was a toss-up (for a while, anyway) which of those finds had the biggest impact on his life. He cleaned up his act to the point that he even gave up alcohol, causing his movie buddy, “The Duke” to ask him how he did it.

Hamblen replied that it was no secret what God can do, to which John Wayne replied, “That sounds like a song.” So Hamblen made it one. He went right out to the Buick and sat on the edge of the ash-paneled tailgate and wrote It’s No Secret (What God Can Do). Before long, he would hear the tune being sung on local radio stations he’d dial up on the big chrome radio in the middle of the Buick’s dash. Eventually, artists Red Foley, Jo Stafford, and even The King, Elvis himself, could be heard belting out the song through the massive chrome speaker into the Bedford cloth and leather accented cabin of the wondrous wood wagon.

In the aforementioned hunting trip to the High Sierras, Hamblen encountered, at the end of a rarely traveled gravel road, a ragged and apparently abandoned shack, pulling the Estate over and parking it for a closer look. Grabbing his Thermos of hot coffee from the front seat, he cautiously entered the cabin. Inside, he found a dead prospector in a state of fairly advanced decomposition. The scene inspired him to write another song. Using a brown paper bag lying next to the corpse, he penned, This Old House, which later had the distinction of becoming a number one hit sung by Rosemary Clooney in 1954.

There are reports, never confirmed, that the song was originally titled This Old Woody, honoring the Buick Estate that had carried him to the scene. Hamblen did note that the song was a metaphor for the body that dies, but the soul that carries on.

Sounds like an argument for the fact that it could have been written about the Buick, which still has an incredible body seventy years later, and more soul than almost anything on wheels produced since. Shakin’ Stevens, an artist of notable reputation across the Pond, must have agreed because he re-recorded the song in 1981 and it became a number one hit in Britain all over again.

Songs inspired by fallen miners written on journeys in wagons crafted from fallen trees. Funny just what helps us make sense of the universe.