Durham “Big Meeting Day” Montage by Joe McCarty

                   words & music Ed Pickford.

         Singers: Pegleg Ferret from their CD Not Fooling Anyone.

The stream was black from a miner’s back
In the place where I spent childhood days
I built a camp in the pit-prop yard
I remember the mines had ladies names.
From the swings I could see the men
On haunches as they crouched in line
But that was then and now I think
What a strange lover is a coalmine.
Chorus:
          Strange lover that’ll kill a brother
          Crucify a wife and mother
          Sleep with a man at the same time plan
          To bring him down, down, down
          What a strange lover is a coalmine.
My friend Joe worked 50 years
Deep in the belly of a Durham mine
All those years he shed no tears
Durham men are not that kind
His brother died in a fall of stone
He seemed a hero at the time
But that was then and now I think
What a strange lover is a coalmine.
Joe survived ‘til he grew old
But he never did forget about the coalmine
He loved the coal and the Union too
He had a miner’s pride about his own time
I remember the hot Julys
The banners that flew in the Durham skies
I remember the hopes and the fears and the lies
What a strange lover is a coalmine.