Washington County

Washington County

 Used to be it was only Massachusetts

 Now there’s “from aways” from every goddamn place

 The coastal folks they all grin and bear it

 ‘Cause dollars roll in from the interstate

 Up here it’s just hunters and peepers

 A couple months to make some extra scratch

 Try to save it up and make a Christmas for the kids

 or do the best you can with a sewn-on patch

 Once a month we hit the food bank

 Once a month we reach the end 

 of the rope we’re clinging onto

 and the check the county sends

 Blue-lipped children waiting on a school bus

 All secondhand jackets and boots and gloves

 Late afternoon they’ll come back home in darkness

 ‘neath streetlights that flicker and buzz

 Uncle Joe he used to work the railroad

 But the trains they don’t run through here no more

 He raised a family the kids all left for Bangor

 You choose to move or just stay poor

 Chorus

 There used to be some work down at the pulp mill

 There used to be some money cutting trees

 But they bought up every lot along the coastline

 Turned it all into BnB’s

 You can skip a stone out on the water

 But you can’t drive any further east 

 The roads all end out at the cold Atlantic

 I could walk on in and surely be released

 Chorus