Family Reserve

When I saw the ambulance

Screaming down Main Street

I didn't give it a thought

But it was my Uncle Eugene

He died on October the second 1981

And my Uncle Wilbert

They all called him Skinner

They said for his younger ways

He'd get drunk in the morning

And show me the rolls of fifties and hundreds

He kept in the glove box of his old gray Impala

And we're all gonna be here forever

So Mama don't you make such a stir

Now put down that camera

And come on and join up

The last of the family reserve

Now my second cousin

His name was Callaway

He died when he'd barely turned two

It was peanut butter and jelly that did it

The help she didn't know what to do

She just stood there and watched him turn blue

And we're all gonna be here forever

So Mama don't you make such a stir

Just put down that camera

And come on and join up

The last of the family reserve

And my friend Brian Temple

He thought he could make it

So from the third story he jumped

He missed the swimming pool

Only by inches

And everyone said he was drunk

Now there was great Uncle Julius

And Aunt Annie Mueller

And Mary and Granddaddy Paul

And there was Hanna and Ella

And Alvin and Alec

He owned his own funeral hall

And there are more I remember

And more I could mention

Than words I could write in a song

But I feel them watching

And I see them laughing

And I hear them singing along

We're all gonna be here forever

So Mama don't you make such a stir

Just put down that camera

And come on and join up

The last of the family reserve