Old Annie

Old Annie up the street she is my heroine
She is not proud she does not hide her gray
She's eighty seven wise and bright and lucid
You are only old as you feel so she say.

She once told me the story of her great love
She fell in love when she was seventeen
With Andy Rice the son of 'Jim the Baker'
The father of her daughter sweet Raelene.

Two years her senior he was just nineteen
A handsome dark haired man nearing his prime
And that is going back three score and ten years
In average human span a whole lifetime.

Andy was brave a man who knew no fear
And he was strong as any grizzly bear
And from a challenge he would not climb down
And he was quite willing to take a dare.

One saturday evening he had one too many
And his young drinking mates dared him to try
To walk the steel rail on bridge above the highway
And to take the challenge Andy wasn't shy.

Half way across he seemed to lose his balance
From a recent shower the railing had been wet,
He fell his shocked mates were powerless to help him
And she still feels tearful about his death.

And though she's had many affairs and all of those were short lived
You will not hear old Annie bad mouth men
Her one true love he died whilst a teenager
In love and life it's never easy win.

Her daughter Raelene is now a grandmother
And Annie's oldest great grandchild is twenty three
And she says no I don't feel over eighty
And I will live beyond the century.

Old Annie up the street she is my heroine
And the only one great love she ever knew
He lost his life because he diced with danger
But to his memory she is ever true.