Family History

(Chorus) DON’T FORGET YOUR FAMILY. THEY ARE WAT BECOMES YOU.
FAMILY HISTORY GOES ON.

My great grandmother was a swinger, in love with Errol Flynn.
She had her nails and hair done weekly and dept a photograph of him.
She played an ornate antique piano; she weren’t no damn farmwife.
She kept a modest apartment in te cty where she ended up her life,
With a Steinway grand… and that’s all

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And then there was Great Aunt Ida, an actress in New York.
She was every little girl’s dream of a woman and her work.
She had a bathtub full of flowers and suitors in the wingss,
But she was an ambitious and practical woman
And she wasn’t swayed by such sweet things.
Then a Greenwich Village bus busted up her legs,
Family business in Boston hit the dust
And her mama sucked up her last dregs,
Ah, but not… her… pride.

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Hazel, she was the baby, she was a lady, she was my Dama.
Hazel, she had the gift of gab, lovely violet eyes,
And she married a good, good, good man.
But she paid the heavy price for the happines she’d find
‘Cause by the time that I was born, my grandma’d lost her mind,
but not…her…man.
Oh, he stood beside her. He loved her true,
And , She died with a loving touch, if confused.

Auntie Maude was one fine lady, she lived on a mountaintop in the woods.
She kept a girl’s camp, raised my mama when Dama didn’t think she could.
Auntie Maude took care of everything
That her second husband Harvey left behind.
Auntie Maude long outlived both of her men, but she probably didn’t mind.
At the age of eight-seven she got in her car and drove
All the way from Florida towards California alone,
But she got confused in Texas and I guess you’ll understand
Why the last day of Auntie Maude’s freedom was wasted in that flat land.
Her son Hrvey flew out and put Auntie Maude
Into one of those old-folks’s homes.
It was the only time I’d ever met her; I was only four and she was old.
Ah, but she was the strong one and I remember her plain
And her fingers drumming on the top of my head felt like rain.
Where am I in all of this? Will I betray with a kiss?
Will I find the one I seek? Will I wind up strong or weak?
Where am I in all of this? Who do I want to be?
The tortured artist or the woman of a family?

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