my real name was Clarence
but they always called me Dummy
because they thought I was stupid
I lived with my Mom and swept up at Prewett’s store
for a dollar a day ‘cause
I wasn’t smart enough to do nothin’ else
every Saturday the local men
would sit and smoke and tell jokes
around Mr. Prewett’s pot-bellied stove
then one of them would wink
and lay a nickel and a dime on the pickle barrel
and tell me I could have whichever one I wanted
for myself and I would take my time
and rub my chin like I was thinkin’
heavy on it and pick the nickel and say
“this one - it’s the biggest”
and they’d all laugh and slap their knees
they never tired of it
one day Mr. Prewett asked me
“why do you let them make a fool of you
like that? you know that a dime’s
worth more than a nickel” and I come up
close to his ear so no one else’d hear
and said, “cause if I took the dime
they wouldn’t do it no more”
and they called ME ‘Dummy’!