Everyone knows him as old folks.
Like the season,
he'll come and he'll go.
Just as free as a bird,
and as good as his word,
that's why everybody loves him so.
Al ways leaving his
spoon in his coffee,
puts his napkin up under his chin,
and that yellow cob pipe,
so mellow it's ripe,
but you needn't be ashamed of him.
In the evening, after supper,
what stories he would tell,
How he held a speech at Gettysburg
for Lincoln that day.
Lord, I know that one so well.
I don't quite understand about old folks.
Did he fight for the blue or the gray?
Seems that I've heard him mentioned.
He lives on a pension.
He'll never come right out and say.
Then he meets the
late train at the station,
Sets and whittles
when it's overdue,
While they're sorting the mail,
every night without fail,
he's getting himself a little nip or two.
Every Friday, he's going fishing,
way down on Buz zard's Lake.
But he only hooks a perch or two,
a whale got away.
We have to warm
up the state.
Someday there'll be
no more old folks.
What a lonely old town this'll be.
Children's voices that play
Will be still for a day.
The day they take old folks away.