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The American Dream (Harlis and Freda​)​, Voice Memo Demo

by Jeni Hankins

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I used to love going over to Aunt Freda and Uncle Harlis’ house when I was a little kid. They had an RV and loved to drive all over the USA fishing (both of them), knitting (Aunt Freda), and taking pictures of everything. Then they’d come home and show slides and movies to us kids on a screen in their living room. As technology moved on, those movies became videos from a video camera which they showed on their big wooden console TV.
This song is my memory of them.

lyrics

The American Dream (Harlis and Freda)

Uncle Harlis and Aunt Freda
(she was my grandaddy’s sister)
had a Kodak slide projector
and their very own movie screen.
We’d have peanuts and coca-cola
on their green plaid sofa
while they showed us a hundred pictures
of everywhere they’d been.

All the way to California,
Idaho and Utah,
they’d seen the Grand Canyon
and the Grand Coulee Dam.
Niagara Falls and Houston,
the Great Lakes, the Alamo,
Florida alligators,
cattle by The Rio Grande.

They never left the country
‘cause America was so big –
always another highway
to a place they hadn’t seen.
Aunt Freda took her knitting.
Uncle Harlis, he went fishing.
They came home with a hundred pictures
of the American dream.

They sold fishing poles and rifles,
crossbows and split shot,
taxidermy deer
at the country store they owned.
She made coasters and doilies,
little sweaters for our colas.
We’d sleep in their camper
and dream about the road.

My cousin bought their camper.
They gave me their Kodak camera.
They retired down in Florida –
said their traveling days were through.
But I never will forget
how they took us across America
on a green plaid sofa
from their little living room.

©Jeni Hankins, BMI 2023

credits

released August 18, 2023
Jeni Hankins, Vocal and Guitar

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about

Jeni Hankins London, UK

Jeni Hankins grew up in the coalfields of Appalachian in Southwest Virginia among a family of miners, moonshiners, and journalists. Her writing pulls the grit, gumption, and keen sense of observation out of that heritage like drawing water from her grandmother’s well.

In every song, Jeni’s “true sense of place shines through – old as the hills, but brand new at the same time.”
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