looking down their noses at me
There was ten of us living
On the banks of the river
and everybody said we was fo' folks
but all he ever raised was us
He dug a forty foot well,
struck thirty -six gallons of dust
The Salvation Army gave us clothes to wear,
a man from the county came to cut our hair
We lived next door to a billionaire,
but that's how it is when
we sure was a hungry bunch
And if the wolf ever come
he'd have to draw a picnic lunch
My granddaddy's pension was a dollar
That was ten dollars less
than the landlord wanted for rent
Oh, the landlord's letters got nasty indeed
He wrote, get out, the call couldn't read
And we was too broke to even pay heed
We sure was a hungry bunch
And if the wolf would ever come
He'd have had to draw a picnic lunch
We had somethin' that our
Kept us warm in the winter
and cool when the sun's high
And we wasn't that the poor, poor folks
My mama and my papa was the poor folks
A sister and a brother was more folk
A dog and a cat was more folk