All them boys and girls left soon as they could.
Gone to places where’s jobs and a life o’ they own.
You see ’em comin back to visit, shinin’ like a new car,
lookin like a landlord or some kinda preacher.
Then one summer there comes one o’ them girls,
Ruth – after her grandmother, an she’s lookin
like some real woman now with a baby in her arms.
That baby was called Edward, don’t know who it’s after.
It was a tiny thing an sickly an he died at the end of summer.
Well Ruth left not long after the funeral
an nobody seen or heard from her for five, six years.
Then one day she come in on the bus, the one come
down from Chicago ever week.
An one thing I noticed bout that girl, aside from her flashin clothes
an gold hair, bright shining teeth
-her eyes look blank as a old shack at the end o’ the road.