Lucille never knew, when our family came. They're still pulling bones from the black Phelps County clay.
There’s stories of the Cumberland, and a fight some Shawnee braves, cut free of the mud to a land that burns the rain.
My great grandfather Joe, he ran cattle on these plains. At night, he’d sit and carve a horse from a cut of green osage.
And he’d rarely say a word, he had a calm and gentle way. Helped his daddy stack the blue stem so they’d have a place to lay.

And he knew a dollar bill can't hold a flame to a cord of cut wood. There’s men alive and they would leave you cold if they could.
They don’t know the worth of what they trade away. This black clay is gonna swallow up everything the lord don’t take.

A Daughter of depression, no stranger to hard times.
She knew the sound of trouble bound to roll right down the line.
Haunted by the dustbowl and the sins of 29.
Well I’d watch them crooked fingers threading through her garden vines.

She knew a dollar bill won’t see you through like a cellar full of food.
Putting by for staving off the cold midwinters blues
Some don’t know the worth of what they stand to lose, this black clay is gonna swallow up everything the lord can’t use.
Everything that the lord can’t use. Try as we might, we’re all bound to lose.
Because there is weak, and there is strong.
Son there's only right, and only wrong.

Looking back she saw the signs from her front porch at sunrise, she felt the pain of good man slain across the allied lines.
She held to the wheel, sent a prayer up from the field.
Lord if it’s your plan, won’t you save a good man for me.

Because she knew a dollar bill won’t hold you through a night so long and low.
There’s things that ain’t for sale, and there’s a wealth that you can’t hold.
We all know the pain of a child of god alone.
And this black clay is gonna swallow up everything the lord don’t own.
Well this black clay is gonna swallow up everything the lord don’t own.