"Red Dirt Girl" by Emmylou Harris--lyrics and comment by Pat Taylor 3/30/07

Me and my best friend Lillian
And her blue tick hound dog Gideon,
Sittin' on the front porch cooling in the shade
Singin' every song the radio played
Waitin' for the Alabama sun to go down
Two red dirt girls in a red dirt town
Me and Lillian
Just across the line and a little southeast of Meridian.

She loved her brother I remember back when
He was fixin up a '49 Indian
He told her "Little sister, gonna ride the wind
Up around the moon and back again"
He never got farther than Vietnam,
I was standin' there with her when the telegram come
For Lillian.
Now he's lyin' somewhere about a million miles from Meridian.

She said there's not much hope for a red dirt girl
Somewhere out there is a great big world
That's where I'm bound
And the stars might fall on Alabama
But one of these days I'm gonna swing
My hammer down
Away from this red dirt town
I'm gonna make a joyful sound

She grew up tall and she grew up thin
Buried that old dog Gideon
By a crepe myrtle bush in the back of the yard,
Her daddy turned mean and her mama leaned hard
Got in trouble with a boy from town
Figured that she might as well settle down
So she dug right in
Across a red dirt line just a little south east from Meridian

She tried hard to love him but it never did take
It was just another way for the heart to break
So she learned to bend.
One thing they don't tell you about the blues
When you got 'em
You keep on falling cause there ain't no bottom
There ain't no end.
Least not for Lillian

Nobody knows when she started her skid,
She was only 27 and she had five kids.
Could'a been the whiskey,
Could'a been the pills,
Could'a been the dream she was trying to kill.
But there won't be a mention in the news of the world
About the life and the death of a red dirt girl
Named Lillian
Who never got any farther across the line than Meridian.

Now the stars still fall on Alabama
Tonight she finally laid
That hammer down
Without a sound
In the red dirt ground

Emmylou Harris was born April 2, 1947 in Birmingham, AL. Her music has won a number of Grammy Awards, including one for the album Red Dirt Girl. Her music and musical collaborations cross several genres.

Listen for what Lillian had, what advantages, resources. Listen between the lines for what she didn’t have.

What she had: a big brother who loved her and upon whom she doted; a dog she loved; a good friend; and she had dreams, big ones.

What didn’t she have: much margin for error, she had a chance, if she did everything right and put to work what few assets she had.

Her brother was killed in Vietnam. Gideon died. She still had her dreams and her friend but her very thin margin for error was even thinner now. But she made an error, a big one. She got pregnant. That sealed her fate.

Did she really ever have a chance? Did she lose it, or give it away?

What was it that killed Lillian? Grieving over her lost dreams.

Most of us are born with much larger margins for error than Lillian. We can screw up, a lot, before we use up our margins and ruin our lives. Lillian didn’t have that luxury. Her mistake was a doozy, even if she’d had more margin for error. Was her hard life and early death inevitable or did she throw it away? Can we use as an excuse for failure the fact that we came into the world with little chance? Lillian didn’t have much of chance but she had some shot at achieving her dreams. But she never got farther from home than Meridian!