Sam Falbo's Blues - Live

Samuel T. Falbo was born in Floyd County
Late 1950 in eastern Kentucky
Raised by a TV repairman who tinkered
With old radios in a dimly-lit kitchen
Never able to put much food on the table
In a coal-covered holler in southern Floyd County

Sam and his brothers all split for Ohio
The day that oldest was legal to drive
Stacked in an Oldsmobile shoulder to shoulder
Like the bedroom they'd shared all those years in Kentucky
Six hungry brothers, all feeling lucky
Running Route 23 to a home in Ohio

Samuel T. Falbo found work on Lake Erie
Pouring three hundred miles of the Ohio Turnpike
With his three younger brothers and an old Puerto Rican
Who could outwork those Falbos even when he'd been drinking
From the time he woke up, to the five o'clock whistle
To a smoke-filled hotel room on the Ohio Turnpike

Sam met a girl who washed clothes for a living
On the corner of Mill Street in Huron, Ohio
And the traffic on Mill Street stood still when she'd smile
And she always did smell like the freshest of linens
So he gave her his name and she gave him six children
All baptized in a single room church on Lake Erie

Samuel T. Falbo bought a house by an orchard
That stretched from the tracks nearly clear to the turnpike
Where his two oldest brothers toiled when they were sober
Enough to pick apples from twenty-foot ladders
And when they weren't scrapping metal or trading in horses
Or sleeping on couches in the house by the orchard

Sam was an old man before he turned thirty
From decades of concrete and honest hard living
Paycheck to paycheck, layaway and credit
Knowing this life would kill him, if only he'd let it
And a month after forty, old Falbo he let it
And they buried Sam Falbo by a church on Lake Erie

Samuel T. Falbo died broke and unnoticed
A stroke in an Oldsmobile on County Line 20
Leaving seven mouths hungry and fourteen hands empty
And no food on the table in a dimly-lit kitchen
Just seven mouths hungry and fourteen eyes weeping
And one middle-aged widow who smelled like the linens