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 livin' in a two room shack On the banks of the river by the railroad track We kept chickens in a pen in the back And everybody 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 give us clothes to wear A man from the county came to cut our hair We lived next door to a millionaire But we wasn't nothin' 'cept 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 have had brought a picnic lunch My granddaddy's pension was a dollar and thirty three cents That was ten dollar less than the landlord wanted for rent The landlord's letters got nasty indeed He wrote 'Get out' but Pa couldn't read And we was too broke to even pay heed But that's how it is when you're 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 have had brought a picnic lunch 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 howlin' 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 My mom and my dad was po' folks My brother and my sister was po' folks My dog and my cat was po' folks