Tenant Farming
I was reminded of my mother's family's background this weekend when we visited the Southern Tenant Farmers Union Museum in Tyronza Arkansas. They, the family of Will and Jessie Daffron, moved about central and northern Alabama farming lands as they went. They had no union. They often struggled and they moved regularly.
I wish they had had a union. They had the close-knit family, but I mean something more than that. Such as
My Granddaddy Daffron wrote all his life. Here is something that has come down to me in typescript (one of the daughters began typing up Granddaddy's "poems" years later and unless somebody else in the family has the original handwritten copy then I am afraid it has disappeared.)
I will date it to 1934 because of the reference to the Bankhead law.
And by the way, "dope" was a term that Granddaddy used for "medicine".
The Hayseeder’s Lament
By Will Daffron, Millport Alabama
What do you think
About the gink
And all this high-brow clan
Who congregate
And advocate
Bankhead’s reduction plan
We raise our cotton
For markets rotten
We freely will admit
But it’s a fact
This Bankhead Act
Don’t help a doggon bit
We plant the seed
And tend the weed
Side dress with guano
We plow and hoe
Keep on the go
No rest so help us Hannah
We work and sweat
Just fume and fret
And worry every day
Haul it to town
And with a frown
Give half the stuff away
We have to sign
On dotted line
At every turn we make
Then buy permits
And send remits
With that we can rake
We pay the ginner
The real winner
In this old game of chance
His biz is brisk
He takes no risk
Your see that at a glance
We count our dough
And hope to go
Right out and buy a shirt
Some calico
And thread you know
To make the wife a skirt
We heave a sigh
And almost cry
To find we’re in a pickle
A note past due
For 10-2-2
Don’t leave a blessed nickel
No shoes, no socks
No calico frocks
Nor just an old straw lid
Not even a hope
To buy a dope
Or candy for the kid
Can’t sell a cow
A pig or sow
A turkey, goose or guinea
Everyone broke
Their stuff in soak
Nobody’s got a penny
No money to spend
No one to lend
A penny on our note
All of us busted
No one trusted
To lead a billy goat
Everybody knows
We have no clothes
Our children underfed
So tell us quick
What stunt or trick
We’ll pull to get some bread
