American Gothic - David Ackles

Mrs. Molly Jenkins sells her wares in town

Saturdays, in the evening, when the farmhands come around

And she sows all their names in her gown

Ah, but is she happy?

no no no

She wants a better home and a better kind of life

But how is she going to get the things she wants,

the things she needs as some poor wretch of a farmer’s wife

He trades the milk for booze

And Molly wants new shoes

And as she snuggles down

With a stranger in some back of the barroom bed

It’s much too dark to the see the stranger

So she thinks of shoes instead

Old Man Horace Jenkins stays at home to tend to his schemes

Sends for pictures of black stockings on paper legs with paper seams and he

drinks

until he drowns in his dreams

Ah, but is he happy?

No, no, no

He wants to be reborn to lead the pious life

But how’s he going to going shed his boozy dreams when he has to bear the cross

of

a wicked wife

She claims to visit shows

And he pretends that’s where she goes

And as he snuggles down to his reading in a half-filled marriage bed

He’s so ashamed of what he’s reading that he gets blind-drunk instead

Sunday breakfast with the Jenkins

They break the bread and cannot speak

She reads the rustling of his paper

He reads the way her new shoes squeak

And pray God to survive one more week

Ah, but are they happy?

You’d be surprised… between the bed and the booze and the shoes

They suffer least who suffer what they choose