greenrollinghills

Green Rolling Hills

You could call this section of the songbook, "People Removal". We are a country of immigrants; but our people didn't stop migrating when they got to the East Coast. They kept going and spreading all over. Americans are basically a shiftless lot. We're a very mobile people, and we resent it when our mobility is stopped. When the Pacific Ocean stopped our westward mobility, we translated that into upward mobility, and now it looks like there's a ceiling on that. It's very frustrating to most Americans that there isn't room to elbow in any direction.
Our economic system forces people to go places they don't want to go, whether it's out of the slums because of urban renewal, or out of the southern mountains because of the death of agriculture or the death of the mine communities. That's people removal.
I visited West Virginia a number of years ago. We were driving in an old car that had a. bad leak in the radiator. We stopped every now and then in these hollers to get water and to talk to the people. In one place there was a woman about 50 years old who let us use her pump. I commented to her that down in the town it seemed that everybody I ran into wanted to get out, wanted to go North or go West and find some decent work. The young guys in the bars would ask me where I had come from and if there was any work out there. Of course there wasn't.
But back in the hollers it seemed like the people were rooted to the land, didn't want to go anywhere, even though there wasn't any work. This was before food stamps and programs like that where you could at least feed your family.
She gave me a lot of reasons I didn't understand. But she gave me one I could understand, because I have a great affection for the mountains in my state, and I miss them when I spend a lot of time in the East. She said to me, "It's these hills. They keep you. And when they've got you, they won't let you go."

My daddy said don't ever be a miner,
A miner's grave is all you'll ever own.
Never have a dime to spare,
Hard times everywhere,
Now these times they are the worst I've ever known.

I'll move away into some crowded city,
In a Northern factory town you'll find me there;
Though I leave my heart behind,
I will never change my mind,
For this troubled life is more than I can bear.

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