♪♪
♪ There's a whole lot of people looking down their noses at me.
Oh, yeah!
♪ Because I didn't come from a wealthy family, to make some truth.
♪ There was ten of us living in a two-room shack
on the banks of the river by the railroad track.
And we kept chickens and a pen and a file.
And everybody said we was poor folks.
Springer Mountain Farm's chicken, of course.
My daddy was a farmer, but all we ever raised was us.
Hear that gush?
He dug a forty-foot well and hid 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 millionaire,
but we wasn't nothing except poor folks.
We was poor folks living 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 dollars less than the landlord wanted for rent.
The landlord's letters got nasty indeed.
He wrote the key out, but Paul couldn't read.
And we was too broke to even pay heed.
But that's how it is when you're poor folks.
We was poor folks living 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.
It was warm in the winter, cold when the sun was high.
But whenever we didn't have food enough,
and the howling winds would get pretty rough,
we'd patch the cracks and we'd set the table with love.
Because that's what you do when you're poor folks.
And we wasn't nothing except poor folks.
My mama and my daddy was poor folks.
My brother and my sister was poor folks.
My dog and my cat was poor folks.
And even Larry Black was poor folks.
Yeah!
Got that right.
Yeah!
Yeah!
Yeah!