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Ask a kid, "Who are your heroes?"
Chances are they'll give you the names of made-up people
Huh? He-Man, Barbie
Now I don't understand it about heroes
It really bothers me
What- what happened to the time when
Heroes were flesh and blood people?
You know, people like Emma Goldman or Elizabeth Gurley
Flynn or Mother Jones or Big Bill Haywood or Babe Ruth
Joe DiMaggio, great boxers, you know, Joe Louis
Grandparents, what's wrong with your grandparents being heroes? See
My mother, she worked for the CIO as a labor organizer
And she made sure that we had appropriate
Heroes, flesh and blood people
She would clip columns out of the Cleveland
Plain Dealer, a good labor paper in its day
Paste 'em in scrapbooks
We could take it to school to- to share with
Our kids at the equivalent of show and tell
Scrapbooks were mainly full of clippings about bank robbers
She seemed to favor bank robbers
Called 'em class heroes
Didn't understand at the time what she meant
I do now
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