Last edited Mon Oct 1, 2012, 11:16 AM - Edit history (1)
Canadian singer-songwriter Garnet Rogers (brother of Canadian folk legend Stan Rogers) captured the feeling of loss that Thom Hartman describes ... killing the American Dream ... in a very personal tale, probably a true story...picking up a hitchhiker on the night of Reagan's reelection.
Covers most of the bases...a life, hard work, a dream, then health problems, no insurance, the losses, the sin of being poor. It could happen again...to any of us...there, but for fortune.
(couldn't find a good video/audio, so you'll have to read it as a poem)
Hannah haunts this darkened highway
Her face is pinched in the headlights glare
She has one hand to her collar closed
The other in the air
She is grateful for the dashboard heater
She rubs her hands and fusses with her hair
She lights a cigarette with a battered lighter
Blows the smoke into the air
"I'm going east to see my daughter
I've got a grandson nearly four.
They moved away to Minnesota,
No, I've never been before.
I've lived my life in the western mountains;
Work was hard but you didn't mind.
Me and my husband built our lives there
The bills were paid on time.
But he got sick three years ago,
And he took too long to die
With no insurance and just my income
The doctors bled us dry.
So I took what was left and I bought a car
To look for work and to start again
But the Goddamned thing blew up this morning
I've been standing here since then."
Hannah's in the highway café
Her eyes are on the TV screen
She says "four more years," and shrugs here shoulders
"This country's turning mean."
And an aging actor fills the screen;
His hands in triumph in the air
His eyes show sincerity and emptiness
In the TV camera's glare
She said, "I've seen elections come and go
And there's one thing that's for sure
There's one thing this country won't forgive
It's the sin of being poor."
"You can drop me here," she said, some hours later
"I want to thank you for the ride."
So she gathered up her poor belongings
Took a grip on dwindling pride
I left her standing on a corner
I never saw her face again
But the words she said went through me
And I was suddenly ashamed
For I am rich beyond all measure
Not in money, not in fame
But in love, and trust, and friendship
For her it's not the same.
I can see wild geese, like smoke, across the western sky
The gleam of sun on winter hills
Clouds like banners, crimson, in the air
When the evening sky grows still.
Hannah haunts this darkened highway
I see her face from time to time
Hidden well in darkened corners
Far from where the lights of freedom shine.
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