I Can't Help But Wonder Where I'm Bound

My father, a folk concert, and me.

On a brisk autumn evening in 2019, I went to a concert of a folk music icon of my father’s generation, Tom Paxton, at the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago, with my dad. He saw Paxton at a coffeehouse in the 1960s and got his copy of Paxton’s 1964 LP, Ramblin’ Boy, autographed.

Over a half-century later, I listened to that vinyl album, with that autograph faded, in my apartment on Chicago’s north side, rediscovering tracks like the lovely “I’m Bound for the Mountains and the Sea” and still being affected by the loss in Paxton’s most famous song, “The Last Thing on My Mind,” and now understanding the timeless “I Can’t Help But Wonder Where I’m Bound” far more.

Johnny Cash recorded the latter shortly before his death, and the song took on an otherworldly significance. I, too, can’t help but wonder where I’m bound, and I thought about that idea much more so with my aging father.

I couldn’t connect with my father as much when I was growing up. I didn’t understand his understated way of showing emotion--that the way he showed his love was by constantly showing up for me, taking me to libraries and other places. I realize that I was lucky to have had him amidst my difficult adolescence. Those library trips made my life a lot brighter when I couldn’t imagine a life without hearing “retard” and “faggot” thrown at me every day.

“I Can’t Help But Wonder Where I’m Bound” was the second song in Paxton’s set with the duo The DonJuans that night. And as I hadn’t shared many concerts with my father in a long time, especially just the two of us, it made me reflect on our relationship.

My father loves classical music the way I love a lot of other genres. But as I’ve grown into adulthood, we’ve grown closer as I’ve asked him about classical music he listens to. He, too, is an encyclopedic resource on music, though he would never admit to it.

But I got my love of American folk music from him and my mother. He attended University of California--Berkeley in the heyday of the antiwar and free speech movements, so among the first music I ever heard was from that time by musicians like Paxton, Bob Dylan, and Joan Baez, as well as older folk figures like Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie.

In addition to better understanding Paxton’s songs’ sense of loss, I now resonate with that album, Ramblin’ Boy, more deeply because of its discussions of work and social class. I don’t hear many songs about social class in most contemporary popular music, so tracks like “Standing on the Edge of Town,” “A Job of Work,” and “A Rumblin’ in the Land” hit hard for their narratives about the automation of labor and its costs for many workers.

My father, like the characters in these songs, is someone I can’t imagine not working. He’s well past retirement age and he’s never stopped. His work ethic has sustained our family, and I know I wouldn’t have gotten many opportunities I have today without him. He’s a social worker who has made a difference to so many people, including coworkers, that I hope that someday he can take in all the good he’s done for others.

At the concert, Paxton showed his continuing social consciousness with songs like “If the Poor Don’t Matter.” But his longest lasting and most resonant songs are ones about personal restlessness, whether about lost love or friendship, life on the rambling road, or both, in the cases of “I Can’t Help But Wonder Where I’m Bound” and “Ramblin’ Boy.”

After reading an article that describes 1960s “rambling” hits like the Beach Boys’ “I Get Around” in terms of casual sex and life with reckless abandon, I become struck by the level of introspection and reflection in Paxton’s rambling songs. Especially on scratchy vinyl, the pain on “I Can’t Help But Wonder Where I’m Bound” comes through loud and clear. When Paxton sings, “Now if you . . . wish that you were a rambler, too/ Nail your shoes to the kitchen floor, lace ‘em up and bar the door/ Thank your stars for the roof that’s over you,” he expresses the narrator’s grief and pathos with continual life on the road.

And while Paxton played that song faster at the concert than he did on Ramblin’ Boy, as he did with “The Last Thing on My Mind” and the album’s title track, the song made me wonder about my father’s possible regrets and how the music could simultaneously conjure nostalgia for an earlier time in his life. 

Perhaps Paxton’s current takes on these songs reveal that restlessness is overrated, and today that’s the biggest lesson I’ve learned from my dad. I’ve considered myself a “growth-aholic” for a long time, never being satisfied with my progress, but sometimes, it’s okay for me to be grateful for what I have without trying to change anything--including him. My family is lucky to have a father (and now grandfather) who is as stable. At this point, I would not want anyone else to be my dad.

My dad is a genius, a loving father, and a great asset to my life. I can’t help but wonder where he’s bound at this point, of course, but whatever happens, he will always be with me. Hearing him clap at the concert to songs from his younger days made me smile. After all, I can’t help but wonder where I’m bound, with and without him.