Drown - Israel Nash Gripka

I was raised in the Sallisaw Hills

Momma stayed at home and daddy worked the fields

We was always living just like the rest

But back then it was only living at best

I was 18, well I left home

For a tent colony up in Colorado

Good pay for men mining up the coal

At the end of the day we were just digging holes

Oh Roberta Jean I don’t feel much like dancing

Wish to God you’d just leave me alone

Got the feeling that I don’t need no one around

I’m gonna go to the river, I’m gonna lay my burdens down

Then one night I was hanging with the gang

Half past ten and the messenger came

Daddy was a-calling from the panhandle line

Telling me that my momma had died

Two months later in the Ludlow camp

The union ran deep and a strike was planned

Baby you know how these things end

When a whisper is a shout and a handshake is a fist

Oh Roberta Jean I don’t feel much like dancing

Wish to God you’d just leave me alone

Got the feeling that I don’t need no one around

I’m gonna go to the river, I’m gonna lay my burdens down put them into ground

Took a bullet in the arm and I was through with it

The death special rolled in, I just split

Gambling up your life just to work it away

Ain’t worth the blood on your hands and the $ 2 pay

Took the clothes on my back and I headed out East

Working on the docks and reveling in the streets

Got mixed up with another man’s wife

Was on the killing end of a Colt .45

Oh Roberta Jean I don’t feel much like dancing

Wish to God you’d just leave me alone

Got the feeling that I don’t need no one around

I’m gonna go to the river, I’m gonna lay my burdens down

So wash me as white as the snow

As pure as the lamb

Shroud me in the cloth, oh Lord

Take me as I am, oh as I am