Posted on 07/31/2021 3:02:12 PM PDT by bgill
That’s been going on down here forever.
They aren’t ‘chain gangs’ in the old movie sense...hasn’t been so in some time.
Our public roads and right of ways are routinely kept clean by DOC prisoners. This is voluntary labor (low risk inmates) and from what I hear there is a waiting list to be on these clean up crews. They too wish to be outdoors. The monotony of jail life is broken up and in some locales reduction of sentences is applied for number of days working on these crews.
The sheriff there, Wayne Ivey, is a great guy. He’s a lot like Polk county’s Grady Judd. My son is a deputy there.
I do believe that Polk Salad Annie’s Papa was workin’ on a chain gang.
Elvis sang it after Tony Joe white version came out.
I never knew that and this turns out to be the lyric:
Polk salad Annie, the gators got your granny
Everybody says it was a shame
Because her momma was a workin’ on the chain gang
A wretched, spiteful, straight-razor totin’ woman
Lord have Mercy, pick a mess of it
Sock a little polk salad to me
Her daddy was lazy and no-count, claimed he had a bad back
///////////////////////
A woman ahead of her time, apparently.
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Another surprise: Traditionally, the term to describe the type of food highlighted in the song is polk or poke sallet, a cooked greens dish made from pokeweed.
//////////so a sallet, not a salad. Lots of twists and turns. Funny: Since it was 1969 the am radio audience was said to assume “greens” were marijuana.
In most of Florida, I remember striped uniforms and one deputy with a shotgun.
“Community servants” are forced to work to complete their plea requirements, otherwise they are back in jail. That is servitude. Semantics, you say?
“Takin’ it off here, boss!”
I can eat 50 eggs
“LUCILLE!”
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