Old Man Trump - Like Father, Like Son

“Stare. It is a way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.” - Walker Evans

I heard this song this morning. I was familiar with the story, and that is was written by Woody Guthrie.
Lucinda Williams had recently done her own version while on tour. It's gone viral. It's a timeless song, and to me is akin to the classic book of Walker Evans photography and writing of James Agee, that they created during the depression in 1936, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.

These folk in the book were far from famous. But this documentation of reality and truth, portrayed the dignity of those down but not defeated. This book was seen as a threat to the status-qou and was stopped from being published for many years.

Those folks who oppress, have a desire not only to oppress, but also to defeat. Woody Guthrie's song and Walker Evans photos and James Agee's portrayal are just as relevant now as in the past. They both point to a kind of back to the future, where  many aspects of the present are historically a repetition of the past. There are numerous parallels and comparisons that can be found between those landowners in places like Alabama, such as Watson Tidmore, and modern day landowners like Donald Trump.

I Ain't Got No Home - Words and Music by Woody Guthrie

I ain't got no home, I'm just a-roamin' 'round,
Just a wandrin' worker, I go from town to town.
And the police make it hard wherever I may go
And I ain't got no home in this world anymore.

My brothers and my sisters are stranded on this road,
A hot and dusty road that a million feet have trod;
Rich man took my home and drove me from my door
And I ain't got no home in this world anymore.

Was a-farmin' on the shares, and always I was poor;
My crops I lay into the banker's store.
My wife took down and died upon the cabin floor,
And I ain't got no home in this world anymore.

I mined in your mines and I gathered in your corn
I been working, mister, since the day I was born
Now I worry all the time like I never did before
'Cause I ain't got no home in this world anymore

Now as I look around, it's mighty plain to see
This world is such a great and a funny place to be;
Oh, the gamblin' man is rich an' the workin' man is poor,
And I ain't got no home in this world anymore.

---

© Copyright 1961 (renewed) and 1963 (renewed) by Woody Guthrie Publications, Inc. & TRO-Ludlow Music, Inc. (BMI)

David Whitford's article entitled The Most Famous Story We Never Told from Fortune Magazine written in 2005 tells the follow up story 69 years later of Frank Tingle, Bud Fields, and Floyd Burroughs families, that Walker Evans and Jame Agee's book in based upon..