I have every song Hank Williams (Senior, of course, although I do like much of what Junior did) ever recorded. This song, Fly Trouble, does not seem to fit his oeuvre (can you use that word for a country singer from Alabama?). It’s really perky, there’s no heartache, and it’s just not like most of his other songs.
I was listening to it tonight, though, and remembered a point Dale Carnegie made in his excellent “How to stop worrying and start living” about how people can often endure great difficulties without complaint, but then get worn down by the littlest things, with insects being a conspicuous example. You work all day in the fields, come home bone tired to the most basic food, sleep in a hot room, and yet it is the flies that finally cause you to snap.
A month or two ago I was talking with a man who spent his career in the Marine Corps, about the difference between Parris Island and Camp Pendleton, both of which host basic training classes for incoming Marines. In his opinion, the salient difference was sand flies. May have been mites. Little bugs that get on you and itch. They have them in Parris Island, and not in California.
You aren’t allowed to swat them away. You aren’t allowed to kill them. The drill instructors treat them like Hindus treat cows. This man said he had once seen a recruit forced to search for several hours for a bug he had killed, that had fallen in the sand (so that it could get a proper burial, as I recall; beer was involved, so this may be slightly off).
Old Hank knew what he was doing. Damn flies can, in the right circumstances, do as much damage to your emotional well being as your woman cheating on you. Maybe more, depending on the rest of the context.
Dale Carnegie framed it as “don’t let the little things get you down”, and that is sound advice. There’s always some little, unexpected, annoying thing. Be a big wheel, and just roll over it.