Nigga, nigga, what can you do?
I can line a track,
Pull a jack;
I can pick and shovel too.
Water for bathing was being piped into all the better houses of the town, but few people would drink water from the pipes. Pump water, water from cisterns and wells, was better liked. The cisterns were not yet to be discarded. Wade had cleaned many a cistern and well. He would go down into the drained reservoir and dip up the sediments of mud to send it aloft in buckets. He would sop up the last of the water with cloths and rinse again with fresh water. No one sang at a lonely task such as this. Song flowed best when the men worked together in a long line, the picks and shovels rising and falling.
Look down that dirt-road,
Far as I could see.
Saw a jail door....
Look like home to me.