Off to a Good Start
Beautiful Lady
Life Down the Home Stretch
Off To A Good Start
© Frank Denton “The Country Poet”
April 2005
Born out in the country ‘bout the break of dawn,
By sun-up the country doctor had “done come and gone”.
We had ‘taters in the ground and a patch of black-eyed peas,
Our old dog had ticks and our cats did have fleas.
Don’t mean to be complaining, just stating a fact,
‘Cause that’s the way it was in a “three room shack”,
Survived the “great depression”…. you may wonder how?
Pigs, ‘n fish, ‘n chickens and a Jersey cow.
With a cross cut saw and a double bit axe,
A penny or two a pound draggin’ cotton sacks,
Work a little extra just to get enough,
For daddy’s “Bull Durham” and grandma’s snuff.
Come Saturday night; whatcha gonna do?
You ever take a bath in a “number two”?
It ain’t even close to a Holiday Inn,
But it’ll get you by ‘till you can do it again.
But just being “pore” can’t take away your pride,
“You learn your books or I’ll tan your hide”,
Those words were papa’s razor strap suggestion,
Mama daily prayed we’d get an education.
We weren’t any different than thousands of others,
My three sisters and us two brothers,
I guess we just decided if that’s what it took,
We’d better keep our “noses stuck in a book”.
Things did change; daddy said they would,
Mama lived long enough to “see her kids “do good”,
Of course she maybe brag around and pat us on the back,
But all we did was learn the lesson of “the cotton sack”.
Good jobs and houses; sure, they’re mighty nice.
But “us kids” were not the ones that really paid the price,
And today I thank the Lord for all the riches I had,
In a praying mother and my “razor strap” dad.
The author was born at the “height of the great depression” in the piney woods of East Texas on a “two and a half” acre “truck patch” about five miles north of Lufkin, Angelina County. Graduated from Central Consolidated High School at age 15, worked in the Lufkin Foundry at age 16 and served as radio operator for a rear Admiral in the Pacific at 17.
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