One Toke Over the Line

Sometimes an obituary

Adds some background fact

That brings laughter, not the way

You’d think a reader would react.

 

Tom Shipley’s obit clarified

That he was feeling fine,

Perhaps a bit too much, when we went

One toke past the line.

 

A friend gave him some weed to smoke

Backstage between two sets

And warned him more than just two hits

Might cause him some regrets.

 

He didn’t listen, spurring him

To state the way he felt,

Yet a song was born resulting from

The hand that he was dealt.

 

What cracked me up, though, was to learn

Some clean-cut duo sang

That song on Lawrence Welk’s show;

Unfamiliar with the slang

 

Of the drug world, Welk declared

“A modern spiritual” was heard

Because within the toke line, to

“Sweet Jesus” was referred.

 

I wonder now if Lawrence Welk,

So strait-laced way back then,

Ever learned what he endorsed

And why folks shouted out, “Amen!”