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Tough Truckin

American History in Verse

By Terri LyonsPublished 7 years ago 1 min read
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Tough Truckin’

As the Puritans dried up the alcohol

And the influenza virus waned,

As another anniversary of Red summer came around

As Butter Beans and Susie gained Vaudeville fame,

A fever took hold to hit the northbound road,

We packed up everything we owned

To board the Orange Blossom Train

Heading up the Atlantic Coast.

As the stock market rose

And the stock yards grew,

As Henry Ford’s invention

Created jobs for glass, rubber and steel,

As the trap doors of speakeasies

Hid the booze,

Jim Crow buoyed upon the northern lakes

While we caught the Illinois Central or the Dixie Flyer

To Memphis, St. Louis and Chicago.

As the fife and the drum

Found its way to the edgy Delta sound,

As the bo-weevils ate another crop

The tenets were cheated once again

As the Mississippi river caught the echoes

Of Son House and Satchmo,

Highway 61 carried those who couldn’t take the train.

As Texas oil coated the state, the Invisible Empire maintained its terror campaign;

They burned people with acid and castrated men,

Tarred and feathered folks for working together

Demanding fair wages from the cotton field.

Lead Belly and Blind Lemon Jefferson captured tortured spirits by singing the Blues,

Double entendre embodied the lyrics holding raw unedited truth,

So we pack our gingham clothes with no intention of looking back,

As the Argonaut whistle blows

And the sun radiates in the western sky,

Better days await us

Once we get to the golden pacific coast.

One tortured nickel at a time,

One foot in front of the other,

Coming out of the southland

To elevate our condition of existence

In America

performance poetryvintage
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