In the hazy, smoke-tinted saloon of memory, a song from 1974 still floats in like the sunlight slicing through my mama’s yellowed lace curtains in Helmond. Most folks who hear my name don’t peg me for a man who gets caught up in the rare and the nearly forgotten, but one thing about country music: what’s cherished in the corners shines all the brighter for its obscurity. I’m thinking now about Tommy Duncan’s “San Antonio Rose (New Lyrics),” but that, I admit, still rolls off the tongue for more folks than I care for. No, the song I want to dust off for you tonight is “Old Five and Dimers Like Me” written and first recorded by Billy Joe Shaver in 1973, but it eked out a shy spot in the charts when Waylon Jennings brought it to life in 1973, too, on his infamous “Honky Tonk Heroes.”
But I want to zero in not on Waylon’s larger-than-life growl, but on Billy Joe Shaver’s own ragged recording—because in the low budget, near-whisper of that original cut, there’s a whole world of country music’s unsung heroes.
Now, “Old Five and Dimers Like Me” never grabbed big headlines. It’s the kind of song that, if you ask a room full of country regulars—especially on this side of the Atlantic—you’d see only two or three eyes light up. But let me tell you, those eyes belong to people who’ve lived, who’ve loved and lost, and who understand what it means to see beauty in the battered edges.
Let me tell you why this song became the spine for a summer of my youth:
It was 1981, and I was rattling around North Brabant with nothing but a secondhand Yamaha acoustic and a collection of LPs I smuggled in from an uncle in Dallas. Dutch radio didn’t much care for cosmic cowboys or the laidback sorrow of the Texas troubadours, so my resolve—maybe some would call it foolishness—was to bring those songs to the kermis, the cafés along the Markt, and even to the canal’s banks in Helmond’s cloudy dusk.
“Old Five and Dimers Like Me” always crept into my setlist—soft, tucked somewhere between “Pancho and Lefty” and Hank Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.” In that little tune, I found a kind of kinship you only find in the flicker of candlelight with someone who’s seen your worst and stuck around. The song opens, almost spoken:
“It’s not easy to explain,
But it sure seems like it’s destined to be.
I got just the right amount of wrong,
For old five and dimers like me.”
Billy Joe’s voice was scratchy, weighted with crack-up nights and sweet-bitter mornings. What made it magic wasn’t that it sought pity, but that it told a plain truth: There’s a quiet dignity in scraping by—with pride, with stubbornness, with a threadbare sense of hope.
In the Netherlands, where country music was mostly a faint radio signal coming over the water, “Old Five and Dimers Like Me” was a secret handshake. When I’d play it, I’d notice the old-timers perk up—those who remembered the Allied boys passing through after the war, those who’d lived through the lean times, and those who recognized that life doesn’t hand out prizes for showing up with a shiny coat and a full wallet.
What really made the tune special to me, and what still rattles around in my bones, is the chorus—so simple, so humble:
“I’ve been an old five and dimer myself,
I’ve been a user, a loser just to keep from being by myself,
If you don’t mind my saying, I can see you’re out of aces,
For a while,
So hang on to good times, I know you’ll find them again.”
I hear that, and I remember standing on the back porch, cheap beer warming in my hand, looking over potato fields gone gold at sundown, knowing—for all my showboating on stage and the jokes I’d crack in broken Brabants dialect—there were nights I felt out of aces, too. I played that song for the boys at De Traverse after a long week in the foundry. I played it for a girl named Annelies who broke my heart and left behind a checkered hairband and way too many questions. I played it for myself, most of all, when the world felt like an empty dance hall at closing time.
You know, in that lyric, “I’ve been a user, a loser,” Shaver isn’t shrugging off guilt, but acknowledging the messiness of all of us middling souls. The song doesn’t rage against fate—it hugs it tight, squeezes out a bitter little chuckle, and lights a cigarette in the dusk. That’s the Dutch way of country, too: stoic, a bit sardonic, not flashy but sturdy as a row of bricks.
Over the years, I’d see “Old Five and Dimers” crop up in little gatherings—someone’s birthday, a guitar circle in a smoky Eindhoven bar. Every time, without fail, someone would croak out, “Man, I haven’t heard that one in years.” Their voice, a little older, a little more tired, but with that smile—that’s where the treasure lived.
A couple of years ago, I played it for my own son. He didn’t quite get it yet—he still had too many aces left to play. But I saw in his eyes a flicker of curiosity. Maybe, someday, he’ll understand what it means to shuffle those worn cards and still find a reason to play on.
Billy Joe Shaver’s “Old Five and Dimers Like Me” is a lullaby for the lost, a prayer for the broken, and a wink at anyone bold enough to bet on a busted hand. If you haven’t heard it, dust off an old LP, or spin it one night while the rain drums against your Helmond window. I’ll bet you a dime it’ll stick with you. It’s not a superstar—hell, most folks never learned the tune—but those who did never forgot it.
So tonight, if you’re short of aces, or jonesing for the warmth of another old cardplayer’s regret, play this song. There’s love in the loss, and a whole world hiding in the cracks.
Yours from the riverside of Helmond,
**Kroes den Bock**