Amanuensis Monday - Grandma Hill's Poetry, week 9

 

 Mine ears have heard the G.O.P. little fop

Telling of electoral votes that he hasn't got

How he's going to sweep the White House clean

And talking of a policy, whose workings he's never seen.

 

While mine eyes have seen the work already done

Taking care of laborers every one.

Yes, the donkey is marching right ahead

On the path the elephant aspires to tread.

 

And the donkey has a past - records on which to ride

While the elephant must tread on broken promises they'd like to hide.

And ridden by Harry, armored by the facts, will go right ahead

While Tommy bogged down by lies, will ride the poor elephant 'till he drops dead.

 

 

 

Background Notes:

 

Grandma Hill was an ardent Democrat, while her husband C.T. was a staunch Republican. The family stories tell how she would put her political signs in one window of their house while his signs were in another window. During the summer when everyone had their windows open, the whole neighborhood could hear when they were having a political "discussion".

 

I suspect this was written during the 1948 election season. A democrat had been President since 1932 when Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected. After FDR's death in 1945, his Vice-President Harry Truman became President. Truman's Republican challenger in 1948 was Thomas E. Dewey.

 

 

 

Nancy Jane Wiley Hill (1875-1960) was always writing something.  Many of those poems are now in the possession of her granddaughter Shirley Kern.  Shirley, with the help of her sister-in-law Ruth Ormsby, transcribed these poems in 1996 for a Hill-Ormsby-Kern family reunion.  I am going to post many of these poems so that they may be enjoyed by all.

These are copyright 1996 and reprinted with permission.