Polk Salad Annie

Alright everybody, I'm gonna tell you my story

I don't know if anyone's ever been back east

But I come from a town called Brookline, Massachusetts

Yeah, Brookline is an affluent suburb of Boston

It was a really tough place to grow up

Yeah, it's tough, 'cause a lot of people there are upper class

But we O'Briens, we were upper middle class

It was hell

Now my mama, my poor mama, my sainted mama

She's still alive, but my mama

Oh my mama, she had it rough

My mama worked as a trust and real estate attorney

At Ropes and Gray Law Firm in downtown Boston

She made partner very quickly

She brought in a couple hundred thousand dollars a year

She did very well

But my daddy, oh my daddy

Don't get me started on my daddy

Why do you get me started on my daddy?

Oh my daddy, I spit every time I say his name

Yeah, my dad's a microbiologist

He works at Brigham and Women's Hospital

He works for the World Health Organization

He travels the world fighting diseases

Real white trash

Well, growing up wasn't easy, as you can imagine

There were six mouths to feed, six kids in my family

My mama had to get food any way she could

So every morning she would go out

And she would pick up this green that grows on

The side of the road in Brookline, Massachusetts

Yes, it's a green plant called Polk Salad

I'm talking Polk Salad, yeah

That's right, and she'd pick up this

Plant with her grubby lawyer partner hands

Put 'em in a burlap sack

She'd take it on home and boil it up

And that's how we made it in my family

We'd eat that Polk Salad

And I wanna sing a song about my mama right now

'Cause she got me through and she's the reason I'm here tonight

At this sold out show in Las Vegas

And the song goes like this

Back in eastern Brookline

Where the alligators are so mean