"Old Folks" lyrics

Everyone knows him as old folks
Like the seasons he'll come and he'll go
Just as free as a bird and as good as his word
That's why everybody loves him so

Always leaving his spoon in his coffee
Puts his napkin up under his chin
And that yellow cob pipe it's so mellow it's right
But you needn't be ashamed of him

In the evenings, after supper, what stories he would tell
How he held his speech at Gettysburg for Lincoln that day
Oh I know that one so well

Don't quite understand about old folks
Did he fight for the blue or the gray?
For he's so diplomatic and so democratic
We always let him have his way

Every Friday he'll go fishin' way down on Buzzard's Lake
But he only hooks a perch or two, a whale got away
And so we warm up the steak

(Oh someday there'll be no more old folks
What a lonely old town this will be)
Children's voices at play will be stilled for a day
The day that they take old folks away