Birthday boy sings, ‘Goodbye, Joe, me gotta go. Me oh! My oh!’

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Dirk Cavanaugh, center, was toasted on his birthday by Perry-area well wishers, including his brother-in-law Jeff Stewart, right, and old school chum Craig Bullock.

Family and friends in the Perry area gathered in the lobby of the Hotel Pattee last week to wish Dirk Cavanaugh a happy 57th birthday.

Cody and Emily Onnen
Cody and Emily Onnen

Cavanaugh and his wife, Carol Jackson-Cavanaugh, longtime residents in the south Asian nation of Kazakhstan, were in Perry for the Sept. 19 marriage of their daughter, Emily Cavanaugh, to Cody Onnen of Jamaica, Iowa.

The wedding was hailed as a great success.

Dirk marked the anniversary of his birth a few days later with about two dozen well wishers who met for drinks at the hotel.

Big Joe Kinser and Jen Hughes provided musical entertainment, and a highlight of the early-evening gathering came when Hughes offered the microphone to Dirk, who delivered a spirited rendition of the 1952 Hank Williams classic, “Jambalaya (on the Bayou).”

hank
Hank Williams

As Kinser strummed and the party goers sipped their cocktails, Cavanaugh sang:

Thibodaux Fontaineaux the place is buzzin’.
Kinfolk come to see Yvonne by the dozen.
Dress in style and go hog wild, me oh! my oh!
Son of a gun, we’ll have big fun on the bayou.

The crowd joined in the chorus and afterward rewarded Cavanaugh for his efforts with a choice potation drawn from the Hotel Pattee stocks.

While the pleasure was general, most listeners agreed Cavanaugh would perhaps do best to stick with petroleum engineering and return the microphone to Hughes, a request he complaisantly complied with.

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