"Almonds and Dust"

 "Almonds and Dust"
(Tune of "Diamonds and Rust," J. Baez)
 Bill Hatch
 
Well I’ll be damned
Here comes your dust again
But that’s not unusual
It’s just I had a summer cold
When the harvest began
 
And here I sit, hand on my oxygen
Hearing that sound I’ve known
Decades of bumper crops ago
Tractors, trailers and trucks.
 
As I remember your days
Got grayer than rain clouds
My farming was small time you said
Where are you coming from?
A Farm Bureau banquet.
 
 
Ten years ago
I bought you some bee hives
You bought me a cigar
And we both know what farming can bring
It brings almonds and dust.
 
You hit the TV scene
Like a confection
Overweight in overalls
Knee-deep in nuts
You begged like little farmer dolls.
 
And there you played
Permanently late at night
Tractor drivers, truckers, forklifters,
Simple, honest and strong
Applauded your pitch.
 
Now we see you going hunting,
Rooster tails of dust behind you,
New Stetson on your head
Waving to that Winnemucca waitress
The desert full of game in season.
 
You’re puffing on a big cigar
Turning snowflakes gray around you
You kept your fire in the motel rooms
As the deer and the antelope played.
 
 
Now in this drought you’re claiming
That you never speculated
On dry pasture, where’s your flakmen now
Who cried wolf for 30 years?
 
Please bring back that sweet advertising,
Your whining riang out so purely
I believed in country oh so clearly
But, all you’ve got is almonds and dust
And I’ve got COPD.