This is a song I wrote about Lake County, Michigan. Visit and spend some time/money. Last I checked it was the poorest county in the state. Idlewild, mentioned in the song, was a Black resort in Jim Crow times and is still a population center for Black folks today. Search Idlewild Music Festival online or in your socials.
Lyrics
Lake County… if you’ve been through you’ve never been
About halfway… up the mitten of Michigan
Past White Cloud… where pure waters flow and the North begins
And those Lake County roads still work their charms
Window’s down, sun’s on my arm
The trees are bigger, and I’m a little older now
Trees are bigger… I’m a little older now
It’s rich in white oaks… bracken ferns and two-track roads
Rich in bluegills… padlocks and flat... bottomed boats
What they showed me… guess that was all I was meant to know
But Black Eden echoes in Idlewild,
back from Jim Crow days, Flamingo Club style
Grown back from ashes and blooming like an orchid out here
Bought nightcrawlers… from a man with a hand-painted sign
Tarps and plywood… did what they could, couldn’t turn back time
Folks were so poor… one in four below the poverty line
And I thought I knew just what I’d do,
spend every day fishing, live out of my canoe
Never waste a dollar or an hour in that Sportsman’s bar
Two hundred years ago… they sectioned off the whole damn state
Took the white pines… boom times and a reckless waste
By my time… little white pines barely cleared my waist
Now white pines are pushing up over the oaks,
it’s a story that gives me some kind of hope
To think they’ve been growing from lumber camp days ‘til now
And this Lake County road still works its charms
Window’s down, sun’s on my arm
And the trees are bigger, and I’m a little older now
Yes the trees are bigger and I’m a little older now
Негізгі бет White Pines by Jon Hoekstra
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