Claudelle, we must go away and start a new life.
This fruitless sharecropping has just cost me my wife.
Believe me, in every way, I loved your mother.
Frustrated and annoyed, she left me for another.
I know you were heartbroken about what happened to Linn.
You will love someone else after we begin again.
A bunch of other men want to hold you in their arms.
They fall peril to all of your feminine charms.
Your mother wanted you to marry a man fat and old.
To her, he seemed to be worth his weight in gold.
You knew deep inside he was not right for you.
Never did you have feelings for him that were true.
What sadness and grief love sometimes brings.
Your flirting and coquetry have made a mess of things.
Too many men are now competing for you.
We will leave these surroundings and start anew.
Based on the novel "Claudelle Inglish" by the late Erskine Caldwell and the 1961 film with the same title.
Categories:
sharecropping, first love, heartbreak, vanity,
Form: Rhyme
Sunrise found the farmers waiting
at the grits mill by the stream.
With the sound of grinding corn,
neighbors worked as a team.
Sharecropping is just a memory...
No more tobacco to be strung~
Cottonpicking is now mechanical.
There is no redneck song to be sung.
I am a redneck and proud of it.
We are a special breed.
Don't get on our 'fighting side'.
We stand up for what we believe.
We buy syrup in a bottle.
The grits mill grinds no more.
Vegetables don't taste the same~
We buy them from a store.
No backache from picking cotton~
Hands aren't bleeding and sore.
The grits mill has crumbled
Times just aren't the same anymore...
*correct spelling-grist
*(Southern Pronunciation = grits)
Categories:
sharecropping, memory, nostalgia,
Form: Rhyme
In the middle of the night
Awaken by a crackling sound
Parents jump hit the ground
Get out, get out shouted with might
Children scattered every way
Eight boys, three girls were saved that day
The parents with their two brothers
Hoovered close to the others
The oldest son grabbed a table
With kerosene lamp, as he ran
Down the steps with a bounce
Followed by all the kids
God had mercy yes he did
Soon the word got spread
To all the neighboring folks in towns
Love unbounding poured around
Wagons loaded with what people
Could spare, everyone giving a share
Slowly came into view, showing mercy
Not just a few
That was the day my daddy said
His dad broke down
And his heart bleed
He was touched by God's love
That was spread abroad
In God's people one and all
(This on insident that my father told of his childhood. He said that it was the only time that
he saw his father cry. His father was a very stern man and he had to be somewhat to be
able to make it because he lived by renting a farm from someone and farming to make
money to pay the rent. It was just another form of sharecropping. He had to be tough to
make it.)
Categories:
sharecropping, childhood, education, family, father,
Form: Rhyme