Father's Grave
Buddy Tabor
Juneau, Alaska

My father was born in the hills of West Virginia
Rode the coal cars to the train yards, went to work at seventeen
Married Mama late in life, they gave birth to five children
You know hard times was all he ever seen

That old car he drove made him ashamed but to us it was a limousine
He took the kids out riding right after Sunday school
Buy watermelon and stop somewhere, eat it in those picnic chairs
Spit out at each other, spit the seeds up in the air

We did not know that we was poor, to us kids it did not matter
But to him it broke his heart, cracked in pieces as it shattered
Catch the lightning bugs in mason jars as it got dark in our backyard
In a house that we grew up in that our father never owned

Late at night the wind would blow and rattle on the window
In this rundown house he paid the rent for 40 some odd years
And though he worked hard all his life and he never drank or gambled
He never owned that home that he dreamed of through silver tears

When the old man died he didn't have a nickel to his name
All the kids pitched in to pay for his funeral
Mama's sister donated a little plot of land
To lay his body down to rest in peaceful sleep

And it was six feet deep and four feet wide and we covered it with flowers
And thanked our father there for all he'd done
'Cause at last he had a piece of land that he could call his own
No one to collect the rent on his bleached out tired old bones
Tired old bones, tired old bones
And at last he had a piece of land that he could call his own.