Three Chords & a Day Job

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back to the front porch · The Good China · Porch Light On · Twenty Dollars of Regular · Long Way Back to Pikeville

The Good China
Carol Ann Whitsett · key of G, slow waltz · on hold, August 1999

About this one: Grandma passed in the spring of '97, and when my mama and I cleaned out her house we found a box in the closet with my name on it. Everything in the second verse is true except I made the note shorter. Hers went on a while. She was a talker.

VERSE 1
Grandma kept her good china
up behind the glass,
little yellow roses
on every cup and plate.
We ate off plastic, Monday on,
a set she got free with gas.
She said you save the good things
for the ones worth the wait.

CHORUS
So it came out for the preacher,
and it came out for the dead,
it came out when Uncle Wendell
finally got himself wed.
And it sat there in the dark
all those Tuesday nights between,
saving itself for something
that it never got to see.

VERSE 2
When we cleaned her house last April
there's a box with my name on the side,
twelve place settings wrapped in newspaper
and a note tucked down inside.
In that shaky Sunday handwriting
it said, "Honey, don't you wait.
I kept 'em nice for fifty years,
and look who's running late."

CHORUS 2
So I'm setting out the good china
on a Tuesday night for two,
just me and a man who loves me
and a skillet of cornbread, too.
Yellow roses on the table
and there's nothing to celebrate
'cept everything, 'cept everything,
and I'm not about to wait.

BRIDGE
If a cup gets chipped, well, let it.
If a saucer cracks, that's fine.
I'd rather wear a thing out loving it
than keep it nice for all of time.

LAST CHORUS
(repeat Chorus 2, then slow down on the tag)
No, I'm not about to wait.

Porch Light On
Carol Ann Whitsett & Dwight Aubrey · key of D · mid-tempo

About this one: Dwight came in one Tuesday and said his aunt back in Alabama has left her porch light on every night since his cousin left home. That's all he had. We wrote the rest by ten o'clock. The bridge is Dwight's uncle. He really did say that, more or less.

VERSE 1
Danny left in '86
with a duffel and a grin,
said he'd call her from Atlanta,
said he'd be back in the spring.
Mama didn't cry, she just drove to town
and bought a hundred-watt,
screwed it in the porch lamp,
and she's never turned it off.

CHORUS
Leave the porch light on,
it don't cost that much.
The electric bill's been kind to us
and the Lord's been kind enough.
Somewhere out there on the highway
where the white lines run too long
there's a boy who might need something to steer by.
Leave the porch light on.

VERSE 2
Thirteen years, she's changed it
forty times or so.
The man down at the hardware
doesn't ask. He knows.
He just rings her up and nods at her
the way you'd nod in church,
and half the county slows down
when they pass the house at night.

BRIDGE
Daddy said, "Ruth, that boy is grown,
he knows the way back home."
She said, "Well, so do you,
and I still leave it on
every Friday you come in late
from bowling with the boys,
so hush."

VERSE 3
Tuesday night the phone rang late
and she almost let it ring.
A voice she hadn't heard in thirteen years
said, "Mama, I've been thinking."
She didn't say a word about the light,
she didn't say "so long."
She just said, "Baby, come on home,"
and she hung up and turned on
every light in the house.

LAST CHORUS
(Chorus, then:)
Leave the porch light on.
Oh, leave the porch light on.

Twenty Dollars of Regular
Carol Ann Whitsett & Dwight Aubrey · key of A · shuffle, and I mean shuffle

About this one: Everybody on the Row says they need up-tempo songs, so we wrote one. It is not about anybody I know. It is not about my first husband. Stop asking.

VERSE 1
She pulled into a truck stop outside Cookeville
with his ring still on her hand.
Told the boy behind the counter,
"Twenty dollars and a plan."
He said, "Ma'am, I only sell the first one."
She said, "Honey, that's all right.
Twenty dollars gets me over the mountain,
and the plan comes by tonight."

CHORUS
Twenty dollars of regular
and a pack of spearmint gum,
one more look in the rearview
at the girl she's running from.
Every mile marker's a promise,
every exit's one she won't.
Twenty dollars of regular
and she's gone, gone, gone.

VERSE 2
Back in Nashville he's still sleeping
with the TV on too loud.
He'll find the note beneath the sugar bowl
about the time the sun comes out.
It don't say much, it don't have to,
it just says, "I took the car
and the good skillet and the dog.
You know who you are."

BRIDGE
Up on the Plateau the air gets thinner,
and so does what she owes.
She rolls the window down and turns up
a song that nobody knows,
and sings it like she wrote it,
and maybe she did.

LAST CHORUS
(Chorus twice, and on the second one:)
Twenty dollars of regular,
and the dog's got his head out the window,
and she's gone, gone, gone.

Long Way Back to Pikeville

Carol Ann Whitsett · key of C · still being written

About this one: I've had this chorus for two years and one good verse. The second verse has been eleven different things. I'm putting up what I've got so y'all can see that even the ones I love take forever. If you've got an idea, e-mail me. If I use it, I'll buy you a Coke.

VERSE 1
There's a hollow where the sun comes in
about eleven in the day
and leaves again at three o'clock
like it's got someplace to stay.
My grandma's house is sitting there
with nobody inside,
and the creek still talks the way it did
to anyone who'll hear it cry.

CHORUS
It's a long way back to Pikeville,
it's a short way to forget.
I've got a Tennessee tag on my bumper
and a Kentucky kind of debt.
I owe the hills for every word
I ever wrote that sold,
and it's a long way back to Pikeville,
and I'm getting old.

VERSE 2
(still working on it)

back to the front porch · What I Wish Somebody'd Told Me
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All songs © 1998–1999 Carol Ann Whitsett. Please don't use them without asking me.
Last updated September 22, 1999