"Cotton Fields (The Cotton Song)"

Recently, the Reelin' in the Years Archive posted a video from 1969 in which the Beach Boys mime to "Cotton Fields (The Cotton Song)":

I realized that while most couplets are linkt by perfect rhymes ("rotten" with "cotton" and "warm ya" with "California") or assonance ("in a fix" and "lickety split"), this isn't the case for the lines "Came along a nice old man with- he had a hat on / 'A-wait a minute, mister; can you give me some direction.'"*  There's no strong relationship between "hat on" and "direction."  To some degree, this break from the established structure matches how the narrator has left familiar roads.

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*I'm not entirely confident in my transcription.  I referenced some lyrics websites (which I'm always skeptical of), and they all have "a nice old man, well, he had a hat on," but I think what I have is more accurate.  In any case, the ends of the lines are the salient point here.