I can’t have been the only one who, after hearing that John Prine died recently, immediately listened to “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore.” There are other songs of his far more appropriate to the moment — more mournful and somber. But I wanted to hear the John Prine that put a wry smile on my face, that allowed me to laugh at the goddamned absurdity of it all.

There is a reason the song, included on his debut album almost fifty years ago, remains one of his best-known. Prine wrote it while working as a letter carrier in Chicago in the late ’60s. Of all the mail he carried, he hated Reader’s Digest the most; it weighed down his bag and was oddly shaped enough that he couldn’t get it in the mailboxes. When the publication started giving out free American flag stickers in an effort to drum up popular support for the Vietnam War, his hatred increased. Thus, the song.