Red Dirt Girl

Me and my best friend Lillian

And her blue tick hound dog Gideon

Sittin' on the front porch coolin' in the shade

Singin' every song the radio played

Waiting for the Alabama sun to go down

Two red dirt girls in a red dirt town, me and Lillian

Just across the line

And a little southeast of Meridian

She loved her brother, I remember back when

He was fixin' up a '49 Indian

Told her, little sister, going to ride the wind

Up around the moon and back again

He never got farther than Vietnam

I was standing there with her when the telegram come for Lillian

Now he's lying somewhere

About a million miles from Meridian

She said, "There's not much hope for a red dirt girl

Somewhere out there is a great big world, that's where I'm bound

And the stars might fall on Alabama

One of these days, I'm going to swing my hammer down

Away from this red dirt town

I'm going to make a joyful sound"

She grew up tall and she grew up thin

Buried that old dog Gideon

By a crepe myrtle bush at the back of the yard

Her daddy turned mean and her mama leaned hard

Got in trouble with a boy from town

Figured that she might as well settle down, so she dug right in

Across a red dirt line

Just a little south east of Meridian

Yes, she tried hard to love him, but it never did take

Just another way for the heart to break

So she learned to bend

One thing they don't tell you about the blues

When you got 'em, you keep on falling cause there ain't no bottom

There ain't no end, least not for Lillian

Nobody knows when she started her skid

She was only twenty-seven and she had five kids

Could've been the whiskey, could've been the pills

Could've been the dream she was trying to kill

But there won't be a mention in the news of the world

'Bout the life and the death of a red dirt girl named Lillian

Who never got any farther

Across the line than Meridian

Now the stars still fall on Alabama

Tonight, she finally laid

That hammer down without a sound

In the red dirt ground