RICKENBACKER'S
GRAND ALLEGIANCE
Take the landscape down, I'm tired of the view. Put in its
place a black portrait of you. Leave the fireplace burning,
'til this awesome storm is done. Let the snow and wind
make their piles for I'm playing dumb. There's never been
a percentage of goodness for me, everyone else has
walked with their keys and pockets jangling. I remember
some stupid Pennsylvania Justice of the Peace telling me,
when I sponsored two people who were eloping : 'when
you're single, your pockets jingle.' That was his way of
letting us all know he thought they guy was making a
big mistake in getting hitched. That guy's dead now, long
ago; buried, as I recall, with nothing in his pockets at all.
-
My Grandma was always afraid of getting taken away, to
'the Poor farm; as she put it. Back then, 70 years ago, it
was a real place, a farm you were sent to when you'd
lost it all. If I'd known then, I would have told her, 'when
you're single, your pockets jingle.' But then thinking about
it, I realized that would mean most likely even I'd not be
here. Oh well, absence makes the heart grow fonder;
gets you sent to the Poor House fair.
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