[SALChamps03]

Actually...It's Rain on the Scarecrow. The lyrics of the chorus are : "Son I'm just sorry there's no legacy for ya now; rain on the scarecrow; blood on the plow; rain on the scarecrow; blood on the plow.

I still like the album Scarecrow for it's music. It has another great song called Minutes to Memories. However, in retrospect, it was just a preview to his whining leftist Bush bashing of today.

If you think about it from a conservative viewpoint, which is how I think about it, nobody has any more right to survive in the farming business than they do in any other business. If you cannot survive, then it's the free market's way of telling you that there are too many farmers, and you need to go do something else for a living. Whether or not your family has been farming for generations is irrelevant. All farm subsidies should cease in my opinion.

[concretebob]

Real estate taxes are a direct cause of farm failures. The local governments raise the property taxes based on the lands value to a developer, not a farmer. When the re-zoning gets passed, the taxes go up.
Farm land should be taxed at agricultural rates.

[dennisw]

Woody Guthrie - "Pretty Boy Floyd"


If you'll gather 'round me children
A story I will tell
About Pretty Boy Floyd the outlaw
Oklahoma knew him well

It was in the town of Shawnee
On a Sunday afternoon
His wife beside him in their wagon
As into town they rode

There a deputy sheriff approached them
In a manner rather rude
Using vulgar words of language
And his wife she overheard

Well Pretty Boy grabbed a long chain
And the deputy grabbed his gun
And in the fight that followed
He laid that deputy down

Well he took to the trees and timber
To live a life of shame
Every crime in Oklahoma
Was added to his name

Yes he took to the trees and timber
By that Canadian river shore
But Pretty Boy found a welcome
At many a farmer's door

Yes there's many a starving farmer
The same old story's told
How that outlaw paid his mortgage
And saved their little home

Others tell you of a stranger
That came to beg a meal
And underneath his napkin
Left a thousand dollar bill

It was in Oklahoma city
It was on a Christmas Day
There came a whole carload of groceries
With a letter that did say
"Well they say that I'm an outlaw
They say that I'm a theif
Well here's a Christmas dinner
For the families on relief"

Now as through this life I've rambled
I've seen lots of funny men
Some will rob you with a six-gun
And some with a fountain pen

But as through this world you ramble
And as through this world you roam
You won't never find an outlaw
That'd drive a family from their home

[Ignatz]

John Mellencamp's drummer, Dane Clark, is an acquaintance of mine. I've known him for probably twenty years.