| He was not my father’s brother
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| But he wished that he could be
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| Told us kids to call him uncle
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| And we would be his family
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| He had a wife and kids in Fresno
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| The youngest one was twenty-four
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| Dad had brought him into our house
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| When they didn’t want him anymore
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| He helped us work the family business
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| Building fences in the sun
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| Worked just like a man of twenty
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| 'Til the working day was done
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| He and Dad would spend their evening
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| Sitting in lawn chairs in the yard
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| Where they’d drink a toast to Seagram’s
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| Seagram’s never went down hard
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| Won’t you wake up Uncle Lloyd
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| Got a lot of work today
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| We’ll get Don to make the coffee
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| Load that truck and be on your way
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| Friday night you can drive to Vegas
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| Maybe this time you will win
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| Buy a trailer by the river
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| And you won’t have to work again
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| He was sleeping in the workroom
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| With a mattress on the floor
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| When one night I heard him crying
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| As I passed outside his door
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| He cried, «Rita, girl I love you
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| Rita, Darling please don’t go
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| I’ve tried hard to make you happy
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| I’ve done everything I know»
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| Then I heard the bottle open
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| The tipping up and putting down
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| Heard the rustling of the covers
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| Then he did not make a sound
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| I thought of thirty years of Rita
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| Standing sternly by his side
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| All the years of hanging in there
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| All the emptiness inside
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| Then I thought of how their children
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| Have children of their own
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| And how a man at fifty-seven
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| Winds up living so alone |