Si Kahn Lyrics
Courage

Courage

Sail Away

  Liner notes by Kathy Mattea

     The Italian immigrant woman in "Sail Away" who moved here (like my grandparents) with great hope, only to find the stark reality of the life of the immigrant laborer was not the paradise they dreamed of in the old country.    Read the rest

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The year was nineteen hundred and ten
She thought she was coming to the Promised Land
Left New York on a crowded train
Got off in a town with a funny name
She'd heard that the streets were lined with gold
But her life was built out of blocks of coal
And it's all you sailors, sail away

Company town with a railroad track
She tried to make a home in a three-room shack
Fourteen children that came too fast
She cracked and faded like a photograph
She hated the times that they had in bed
But she said she figured it was all he had
And it's all you sailors, sail away

The children left the town with the funny name
For a place where everybody didn't look the same
Grandma's life became an empty chair
It's been a long time since someone sat down there
If you want to look her up just ask around
The only Italian in the whole damn town
And it's all you sailors, sail away

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