Working Girl Blues (16 page)

As for me and my part in all this, I was overcome with compassion and empathy for these poor souls. I had never been in a room before with so many poor and disabled people. I was raised the same way as they were, so I knew of their hardships and suffering. We had buried my oldest brother a few years before, the one who died of black lung and without benefits. Welfare had to pay for his benefits. So when I got up to sing my song “Black Lung,” I was filled with compassion as I looked out at the carnage of human wreckage the wealthy coal companies had left behind for someone else to
pick up and care for. I was so moved by that experience that I went home and wrote “Clay County Miner.” I got a chance to sing it to them when they came to Washington to lobby for their benefits. It was a rare moment and one that time has not dimmed! This group of brave men went on to organize the Kentucky Black Lung Association.

He's a poor man 'cause mining's all he's known

And miners don't get rich loadin' coal

He's a sick man 'cause that coal dust took its stand

But he don't expect to get no help from that operator man

Chorus:

Well it's good-bye old-timer, I guess our time has come

Those waterholes that dirty coal dust eatin' up our lungs

We'll leave this world just as poor as the day we saw the sun

Well it's good-bye old-timer all your mining is done

I remember the time when I could load more coal than any man

Now my health is gone buried in, down in that dirty ground

And they've taken away my rights and privilege to be a man

But I know that I can't tell all that to that operator man

Remember old-timer when we were little kids

And we'd talk about mining days when we got grown and big

But now we're old broken men they don't need us around

Though we gave our lives to make them rich they won't give us a dime

Repeat Chorus

 

My Heart's Own Love

The inspiration for this song came sometime in 2002 after an evening spent with an old friend over dinner and then listening to music. We had a lot to
talk about since we both are survivors in the male-dominated world of blue-grass. We filled each other in on our business and social lives, and then the conversation turned to “men” and we both readily agreed that a
good man is hard to find.
But somehow here on planet Earth she was able to snag one! We spoke a lot about relationships, band-wise and in our private lives, and I said how lucky she was to have such a special supportive relationship not only at home but on the road as well. That part of the conversation lingered with me, and the next day as I was preparing my lunch I began singing the chorus to this song right out of the blue. After lunch, I got my guitar and tape machine and wrote this song in two hours. It's the first positive love song I've ever written. It was such a nice experience, and I may try it again!

I was wandering along life's highway

Lost and lonely as one could be

Looking for my own true lover

One I thought I would never see

Bridge:

Just when I thought I'd never know love

Just when my dreams all fell apart

I look up from the deepening shadows

And you were standing next to my heart

Chorus:

Bless your heart you are my darling

Bless your soul you are the one

Bless the fate that brought you to me

At last I found my heart's own love

Sometimes we wander like lonely pilgrims

Like old soldiers who long for home

Hoping when our journey's ended

We'll find the sweetest peace we've known

Repeat Bridge and Chorus

 

America's Poor

I started writing this song in 2002 during all of those corporate scandals involving white-collar crooks stealing off the very people they were getting paid to protect. Talk about “vapors”—they put the cows to shame! I also kept hearing stories from people who had been laid off because the factory or business had left the U.S. and moved south of the border, leaving behind thousands upon thousands of decent hardworking people who'd spent a good part and sometimes all of their youth slaving for these money-grubbing factory owners. It came home to me when one of my nieces fell prey to the same injustice. She had spent years working in this factory and had worked her way up to being in charge of several people. The boss asked her to train a new crop of workers. She did and thought nothing about it, until she got her notice that she was laid off. They closed the factory and took their new youthful employees, freshly trained by my niece, and moved south of the border. What
really
stuck in my craw was that they
used
her like a worn-out mop. They mopped up the floor with her and then threw her away. She was and is a loyal, decent, salt-of-the-earth-type person. It all impacted on her well-being, now pushing sixty-some and in failing health. They left her high and dry—no insurance, no retirement, no nothing. There are a million stories like this all over the country. Money, power, and greed are like incurable diseases once you become consumed by them. You can't get rid of them. The more you get, the more you want. The side effects are the lives they wreck. The pity is that they leave no one behind to clean up the wreckage.

Well you don't know my name

But you sure know my face

You've seen me a million times

In some laboring place

Although we're worlds apart

I'm in your daily plan

For I bring you fame and fortune

With my own two working hands

We're America's poor

Oh yes, we're living right here

And poverty's door

It just won't hold anymore

No name or no face

We have lost our place

We fell through the cracks

Looking for the tracks

Of the American dream

There's a man on the corner

With a tin cup in his hand

Though he fought in two wars

His nightmares are still Vietnam

They gave him medals and promises

Now the streets and a shelter's his home

He just stands there in rags

With his medals and begs

And wonders what on Earth went wrong

All the factories are closing, going down where labor is cheap

And they've cheated their workers, out of pensions and their lifelong dreams

Too old to start over, they will lose everything that they own

But south of the border a new factory's in order

To cheat their workers again

 

Freedom's Disciple (Working-Class Heroes)

This song was written in 1980 for people like Sarah Ogan Gunning, Nimrod Workman, and Florence Reece, about how they paved the road that a lot of us have walked on. They're the kind of people I look to when I need faith by my side. I got to sing it for Florence Reece on her eighty-fifth birthday.

Your face reads like a history book, all lined with worried years

It tells of the roads that you have paved, with sacrifice and tears

The hard times have marked you with scars of the past

You are freedom's disciple for the working class

Yes you are freedom's disciple my courage and my pride

It's you that I look to when I need faith by my side

It's you that I worship and not some idol pawn

It's your book of life I read from for the strength to carry on

So now we are walking on the roads, 'cause you spilled your blood and tears

Yes we've been walking in your tracks—your footsteps for years

For all the hurts you've suffered, well we won't let you down

We will die to protect the freedom that you found

Yes freedom's a little bit closer, because you stood your ground

You didn't run when they took their guns and tried to mow you down

Without you the union would be a thing of the past

For you are freedom's disciple for the working class

 

The Homeless

I wrote this song in 1976, but unfortunately, it's as true today as it was then. It's shameful to see so many homeless people roaming the streets of one of the richest countries in the world, begging for handouts, barely existing, always living beneath their dignity, lost in the bowels of society. It seems a country as rich as this could do a better job of taking care of its own. We have a real crisis in this country—in denial about the homeless, the abused and neglected children, the abused and neglected elderly, the millions of uninsured hardworking people, the pharmaceutical industry that lines its pockets while picking ours, our doctors who have vested interests in those companies, and our leaders who get big payoffs and let them get away with it. It's time to wake up. The fox is in the henhouse! And it looks like he won't be evicted anytime soon.

Well they're sleeping in the streets all across this nation

Anywhere they can lay their weary bodies down

Homeless and hungry they're herded like cattle

To the soup lines and the kitchens where the handouts are found

Oh the crying of the dying of the people in need

How long must they suffer before you hear their plea

One crumb from your loaf would feed a starving soul

One little coin from your pot of gold

Yes they're sleeping in the streets all across this nation

From every walk of life that you can name

While greedy politicians and white-collar cheaters

Are stealing and robbing hardworking people blind

Well they're made to feel so worthless no good and lazy

By a system that took away their jobs

But when it comes to sacrifice, cutbacks, and layoffs

It's never big corporations, it's the people who lose

 

My Love Has Left Me