Janice & Bud
  • Base Camp
  • Our Songs
  • Reviews
  • Central State Hospital
  • Randy Howard
  • Contact
Picture
​© 2018 Bud Merritt & floyd jane / All Rights Reserved
Janice Merritt: lead vocal and arrangement
floyd jane: harmony vocal, arrangement and mix counsel
Bud Merritt: RealTracks, RealDrums,  arrangement, mix and mastering

OUR GOOD OLD DAYS
 
They worked dawn to dusk in a dark underground
digging up shiny black coal, coughing up black lung
paying the price to keep a young america's lights on
then passing that life of misery on to their sons
 
     Refrain:
     we call em the good ol' days
     but think of what they might say
     thank god you didn't live in our good old days
 
considered little more than their husband's property
they bore the next generation
they raised and fed and taught and tended who we would become
without a vote without a voice without veneration
 
children at 8 and 9 toiling 16 hour days
robbed of any childhood working the mills
No school, no play, no free day trapped in a man made hell
just so the family could eat and try to pay the bills
 
sharecroppers working land they’d never own
back breaking labor  broken only by the dinner bell
After each year's accounting sinking deeper into debt
they came seeking haven, just found hell
 
No amount of money, no position could protect them
for the lack of a shot or want of a pill
the whole family taken by yellow fever
now a cluster of headstones on a hill
 
what do you think our ghosts will say
about living in our good old days

 ©  2023  Janice & Bud Merritt
​