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Give Thanks, Give Thanks
Out Of The Woodwork V
© September 27, 2005 by Gary E. Andrews
All Right Reserved for the Globe

Chords:
G 32OOO3
C/G bass 332O1O
D XXO232

There are workers in the fields.
They bring the harvest in,
Send it out all over the land.
Look in your potato bin.
Do you see the hands of those
Who made it all begin?
When you Give Thanks, Give Thanks for them.

They work a long, hard day,
The sun upon their backs.
Overnight the rain,
Washes out their tracks.
They try to get some rest
So they can do it all over again.
When you Give Thanks, Give Thanks for them.

(Chorus)
For every bite you take,
Someone had to make,
The ground receive the seed,
And hope for the see to take.
Until they leave this Earthly world
They'll make the earth serve them.
When you Give Thanks, Give Thanks for them.
When you Give Thanks, Give Thanks for them.
When you Give Thanks, Give Thanks for them.

My folks all were farmers.
They farmed Kentucky hills.
Came out here from Prestonsburg,
Seeking fairer fields,
Left behind the coal mines,
And dust that sickened them.
When I Give Thanks, I Give Thanks for them.

(Chorus)
For every breath I take,
I've got Grandpa to thank,
For comin' up out o' the mines,
And movin' on down the line.
Until he left this Earthly world
He made the earth serve him.
When I Give Thanks, I Give Thanks for him.
When you Give Thanks, Give Thanks for them.
When you Give Thanks, Give Thanks for them.

---

More Info...
Give Thanks, Give Thanks © September 27, 2005
All Rights Reserved For The Globe

I wrote "Give Thanks" in about ten minutes one Tuesday morning before I went to work. I like the echo effect of the repeated words. My mother's people came from Prestonsburg, Kentucky, Abbott Creek, Johnson County, and maybe another county thereabouts, back in 19 and 37, Elsie and Cona May-Baldridge, mentioned in the third verse. Elsie was a sharecropper back there, and a coal miner. They farmed the hills alright; hills so steep a mule couldn't climb 'em. They made three piles of corn at harvest time. The landlord came and picked the pile he wanted and that was the rent.
Elsie was a coal miner and had the black lung. After he died they paid off the family a bit. That's their way; wait you out and settle with the next o' kin. It's a truism that "For every bite you take..." bit.
And though millions offer thanks, seldom do we thank the faceless ones whose hands made the earth give them the good they got to us. Thanks, folks. And thanks Elsie, for bringin' my people out of there so I could grow up somewhere else. No knowin' if I'm better off, but I choose to think so. And here in January, 2006, there have been two incidents in West Virginia, a dozen dead in the mines.