I Ain’t Got No Home In This World Anymore—Woody Guthrie
#365Songs: July 16
I’m not saying my entire family just went and got our passports renewed after letting them lapse during the pandemic. But I’m not not saying that.
I mean, what kind of a hometown IS America, anyhow?
I don’t own even an inch of it. I never have. I’ve been renting since the day I struck out on my own. I’ve never yet set a bed on a floor that was mine.
My birth certificate says I’m from Iowa City, Iowa. Am I? I was born in a Quonset Hut that got razed decades ago.
My social security card proves I’m a citizen. But of what? A country where a narcissistic ventriloquial autocrat is about to be elected by a coalition of white Christian nationalists, anti-regulatory ultra-capitalists, and thick-headed bigots.
Of my ancestors in this country, you can say that they all walked one of two paths. Some took a road that led to a farm, and some took a road that led to a college. I was born to those who rode the road to education, so I grew up in university towns.
We never had much money, but we were always near those who did. That’s what being a teacher gets you: respect and debt.
I’ve been writing about hometowns all week. Some we leave behind, some we return to. Some we mythologize, some we disparage. Some we yearn for, some we run from.
I’m ending this series of essays in a different place. A lonely place.
74 million people voted for the republican presidential candidate in the 2020 US presidential election. There are approximately 161 million registered voters in this country. So get any three people together, and one of them voted for him.
But get this. I could care less whether Donald Trump does or doesn’t exist. Whether he is or isn’t president.
What I don’t like is this violence, this racism, this misogyny, this exploitation. I don’t like how we monetize humanity and exploit it for profit. I don’t like it that liars and cheats and hypocrites keep getting more power while humane, ethical, empathetic people keep getting less. I don’t like it that we reward the wicked and punish the upright. I don’t like seeing good people go bad. I don’t like seeing people become neo-Fascist corporate capitalists anymore than I like seeing people become junkies and drunks.
Most of us, we are a nation of renters. I don’t mean houses or apartments. I mean ideas. Concepts. Beliefs. We rent a version of America that isn’t true. We send a check every month for the the privilege of pretending like this is ours, knowing all the while it can be taken from us in an instant, on a whim, for any reason.
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
As the adage goes, there are the families you’re born to, and the families you choose.
So it goes with hometowns. There are those you’re born to, and those you choose.
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Start following the #365Songs playlist today, and listen to each new song with each new article.
