The Browns old
tar-paper shack
Caught the eye of all who passed by
To some it was good for a laugh- To others a silent
cry
It wasn't enclosed
in a picket fence
With an ivy gate or
path
Or shutters on the windows
Or a lawn of lust green grass
The yard was mostly
gravel
Mixed with many bumpy stones
And you had to watch the chickens
Because that's what
they called home
It had a
fence out in the back
Where pigs lived in mud and weeds
I can still hear them grunt and squeal
When you took them out their feed
The barn
was down a little hill
Where cows and horses stayed
The smell of hay to this same day
Brings back some secret games we played
Climbing
the haystack, sliding down
Tunneling under to
the warm, dry ground
A secret place to be alone
To think, or rest, or call our home
Out in the
pasture, closest to God
Found us so often - barefood on sod
Stealing the
rock-salt, a chip at a time
Cleaning it,
never! It tasted just fine!
Our tar-paper shack
didn't have real doors
The kind you would
buy in a store
They were made by
hand, by a gruff old man
With old lumber and
two by fours
He made
those doors so big and wide
And I wonder if he
knew
He did it to accommodate
The many people passing through
That shack
was wall to wall children
At night we slept
four to a bed
You didn't aim for comfort
With two at the
foot, and two at the head!
I know now
in my later years
Tho that shack was far from grand
It was home to a beautiful family
One of the largest
in the land
And we survived
that humble home
And because we lived that way
It made us a little
more able
To live in the world today
Although we didn't
like it then
We have memories
others can't share
And when we get together now
We can laugh at life back there!
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