The Momma 'n' Daddy Collection 81

We've seen good Momma 'n' Daddy times and we've seen bad Momma 'n' Daddy times. Connoisseurs of the genre will know that both shades are essential to it, just as both shades are an integral part of life. In today's instalment I bring you a more Hegelian understanding of this insight, with its agent Ms Dolly Parton. She sings 'In The Good Old Days':

We'd get up before sun-up to get the work done up
We'd work in the fields till the sun had gone down
We've stood and we've cried as we've helplessly watched
A hailstorm a' beatin' our crops to the ground
We've gone to bed hungry many nights in the past
In the good old days when times were bad

Chorus
No amount of money could buy from me
The memories that I have of then
No amount of money could pay me
To go back and live through it again
In the good old days when times were bad

I've seen Daddy's hands break open and bleed
An' I've seen him work till he's stiff as a board
An' I've seen Momma lay and suffer in sickness
In need of a doctor we couldn't afford
Anything at all was more than we had
In the good old days when times were bad

We've got up before and found ice on the floor
Where the wind would blow snow through the cracks in the wall
And I've walked many miles to an old country school
With my lunch in the bib of my overall
Anything at all was more than we had
In the good old days when times were bad

Repeat chorus
In the good old days when times were bad
In the good old days when times were bad

Note that this is not just a crude addition: good aspects and bad aspects. No, the times were really bad; she wouldn't want to live through them again. But the memories of them are not to be traded. For they're hers, a part of who she now is; and for all the suffering they contain, they represent what she gained from it, as well as irreplaceable familial ties. It's a truly dialectical appreciation.

[The Momma 'n' Daddy Archive, containing all the details of the series, is here.]