Po' Folks
by Bill Anderson
"I didn't grow
up in poverty or near anything like what I wrote this
song about, but I always wished I had come from a rural
background, I always wished I had grown up on a farm, I
always wished I had come from a large family. I wrote
the song kind of tongue-in-cheek, because so many of the
people I know and have associated with came from rural
backgrounds and from large families. I know they had a
lot of rough times, but these were some of the happiest
people I ever knew. It was almost like nobody ever told
them they were poor. I was trying to show that, even
though things could be bad, you could laugh at them, you
could smile, and that the most important thing, after
all, was love." —Bill Anderson
Po' Folks
There's a whole lotta people lookin' down their noses at
me
'Cause I didn't come from a wealthy family
There was ten of us living in a two-room shack
On the banks of the river by the railroad track
And we kept chickens in a pen in the back
And ev'rybody said we was po' folks.
My daddy was a farmer, but all he ever raised was us
Dug a forty-foot well, struck thirty-six gallons of dust
The Salvation Army gave us clothes to wear
A man form the County came to cut our hair
We lived next door to a millionaire
But he wasn't nothin' but po' folks.
We was po' folks livin' in a rich folks' world
We sure was a hungry bunch
If the wolf had ever come to our front door
He'd had to brought a picnic lunch.
My granddaddy's pension was a dollar and thirty-three
cents
That was ten dollars less than the landlord wanted for
rent
The landlord's letters got nasty, indeed
He wrote, "Git out!" but paw couldn't read
And he was too broke to even pay heed
But that's how it is when you're po' folks.
But we had something in our house money can't buy
Kept us warm in the winter, cool when the sun was high
For whenever we didn't have food enough
And the howling winds would get pretty rough
We patched the cracks and set the table with love
'Cause that's what you do when you're po' folks
And we wasn't nothin' but po' folks.
