Red Dirt Girl

(Capo 3)

 

Me and my best friend Lillian, and her blue tick hound dog Gideon

Sittin' on the front porch' coolin' in the shade

Singin' every song that the radio played

Waitin' for the Alabama sun to go down

Two red dirt girls in a red dirt town, me and Lillian

Just across the line and a little southeast of Meridian

She loved her brother I remember back when He was fixin' up a '49 Indian

He told her "Little sister, gonna ride the wind

Up around the moon and back again" He never got farther than Vietnam

I was standin' there with her when the telegram come for Lillian

Now he's lyin' somewhere about a million miles from Meridian

She said "There's not much hope for a red dirt girl

Somewhere out there is a great big world, that's where I'm bound

And the stars might fall on Alabama, but one of these days

I'm gonna swing my hammer down; away from this red dirt town

I'm gonna make a joyful sound"

She grew up tall and she grew up thin. Buried that old dog Gideon

By a crepe myrtle bush at the back of the yard

 

Her daddy turned mean and her mama leaned hard

Got in trouble with a boy from town

Figured that she might as well settle down, so she dug right in

Across a red dirt line just a little southeast of Meridian

She tried hard to love him but it never did take

It was just another way for a heart to break, so she learned to bend

But one thing they don't tell you 'bout the blues when you got 'em

You keep on fallin' 'cause there ain't no bottom

There ain't no end, at least not for Lillian

Nobody knows when she started her skid. She was only 27 and she had 5 kids

Coulda been the whiskey, coulda been the pills

Coulda been the dream she was tryin' to kill

But there won't be a mention in the news of the world

About the life and the death of a red dirt girl named Lillian

Who never got any farther across the line than Meridian

Now the stars still fall on Alabama

The night she finally laid that hammer down

Without a sound, in the red dirt ground