Our hero pauses awhile from amidst a hearty outburst of “Hallelujah I’m a Bum” and begins:
I guess pretty soon I”ll be headed back to Spokane and take up my task of wintering in.
I do a little light farming or heavy gardening, whichever.
You know, that kind of farming is hard if you’re in this traveling profession.
Of course when you sing like I do you’ve got to be ready to travel with considerable alacrity.
I’ve got a Greyhound bus ticket in my back pocket all the time.
But you see, quite often I’m not back in town in time for my plowing or my planting. That’s awful.
Now, one time I was sharing a platform in New York City it was, with a bunch of high-powered labor politicos. It was a benefit for the Farmworkers, that’s what it was. I remember Richard Chavez, Cesar’s brother, was there and so was Bella Abzug, former Congresswoman from the State of New York. Remember her? Wonderful woman! I mean, she was loud, vociferous. Big hats.
She was yelling at that audience, a righteous beef it was, about how the Feds, the FBI, had been opening her mail for ever so long.
Well, I knew the feds had been opening my mail for at least 20 years. Reading all my personal radical mail. And it never bothered me because I figured them birds had to learn that stuff somewhere and it might as well be from my mail.
But then it occurred to me in my predicament that having the Feds open your mail might come in handy.
I sent Sheila, my partner, a letter through the United States Mail and I
said in it:
“For god sakes don’t plow up the backyard! That’s where the guns are buried.”
The National Guard rolled up, dug up the whole back yard in time for me to come back and plant the damn thing.
a little interstitial rambling from the mighty U. Utah Phillips
available on his collection We Have Fed You All A Thousand Years
Hey! Dump the bosses
All the bosses
Off your back
Cucurbite 