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One day near |
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Christmas when |
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I was just a child |
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Mama called us together and mama tried to smile |
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She said you know the cotton crop hadn't been too good this year |
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There's not a lot of spending money and well at least we're all here |
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I hope you won't expect a lot of |
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Christmas presents |
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Just be thankful that there is plenty to eat |
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That'll make things a little more pleasant |
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And us kids got to thinking how really blessed we were |
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At least we were all healthy and most of all we had her |
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Roy cut down a pine oak tree and we drug it home |
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Jack and me |
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Daddy killed a squirrel and |
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Louise made the bread |
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Reba decorated the tree with popcorn strings before we went to bed |
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Mama and daddy sacrificed because this |
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Christmas was kind of lean |
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After all there was the babies |
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Tom and Joanne |
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And babies need a few things |
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I whittled a whistle for my brother |
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JackAnd though we disagreed now and then |
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When I gave |
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Jack that whistle he knew |
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I thought the world of him |
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Mama made the girl's dresses out of flower sacks |
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And when she ironed them down |
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You couldn't tell that they hadn't come from town |
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A sharecropper family across the road didn't have it as good as us |
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They didn't even have a light and it was way past dusk |
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And mama said, "Well I bet they don't even have coal oilLet alone apples and oranges and such" |
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Me and Jack took a jar of coal oil nd some hickernuts we'd found |
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We walked to the sharecropper's porch and set 'em down |
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A poor old ragged lady eased open the door |
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She picked up the coal oil and hickernuts and said"I sure do thank you" and quickly closed the door |
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We started back home me and |
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JackAnd about halfway we stopped looked back |
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And in the sharecropper's window at last was a light |
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So for one of the neighbors and for us it was a good |
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Christmas night |
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Christmas came and |
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Christmas went |
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Christmas that year was heaven sent |
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And my daddy put on his rubber boots |
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And paced the floor waiting for the thaw |
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Back home in |
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Dyess Arkansas |
