From the recording Front Porch Project Live
Son’s grandfather was a boy soldier in the trenches of World War I. When the war ended, he immigrated to America to start over, eventually settling in rural North Dakota as a farmer and Presbyterian minister.
Before he left, he promised my grandmother he would send for her once he had a life ready to bring her into. And he did.
She crossed the Atlantic a few years later, and they were married in 1927 in the large hall at Ellis Island, surrounded by other couples who also had to marry before they were allowed to leave the immigration center and begin their new lives in America.
This song honors the courage it must have taken to leave everything behind and build something from scratch.
Lyrics
I worked 40 acres
Broke my back against a plow
Pulling rocks from the mud,
Wondering how
I ever got this far
Just like a fever dream
Raising life from the earth
A place for you and me
Chorus:
Maria, I swear I’ll send for you
When the corn’s above my knee
And that roof no longer leaks
Maria, I wear your locket on a chain
And hold it to my chest at night
in dreams call out your name
Maria
Rocks like sleeping children
Cradled in the earth
Bear a silent witness
And surround me as I work
And I talk to the corn
About children yet to be
Tell them of the life we’ll have
When I bring you home with me
Chorus
The rain came after midnight
And in a flash of cold and light
The wind took the roof
And the devil took the corn
And my screaming prayers unanswered
As the river left its banks
All I could do was
Hold your locket to my chest
Chorus
Her letter, hand delivered
In a shaky hand she wrote
Of her life after the war
And the hardships that she bore
And a young man her parents were
Insisting that she wed
Because unlike me,
His prospects were good
I worked 40 acres
Broke my back against this plow
Stacking rocks in this wretched place
Wondering how
I ever got this far
Like a fever dream of
Raising a life from the earth
A place for you and me
A dream that’s not to be
My Maria