Ballad of Thad Hodges Lyrics

Ballad of Thad Hodges

Written 2017

He grew up tough

He grew up lean

Sharecropping in the Great Depression

Can make a man mean

He ran away from home

When he was just fifteen

Working in the New Deal

Living the American Dream

Second World War came

He volunteered to go

Jumped out of an airplane

Normandy was waiting below

Became a man

1944

Spent nine hours

As a German's prisoner of war

He was tougher than the average man

Someone later generations wouldn't understand

He was born to survive

They say "Thad Hodges was the toughest man alive"

Well he came back home

When the war was through

But he didn't want to farm

So there was nothing for him to do

He drove across the land

California way

Enlisted in the Coast Guard

They shipped him away (to Alaska this time)

He was tougher than the average man

Someone later generations wouldn't understand

He was born to survive

They say ""Thad Hodges was the toughest man alive"

Well, after twenty years

He came back home

Planted an oak tree

Never more would he roam

They gave him a badge

Sheriff's Deputy

Carried a sawed off shotgun

And everybody could see

He was tougher than the average man

Someone later generations wouldn't understand

He was born to survive

They say "Thad Hodges was the toughest man alive"

My granddaddy was the toughest man alive