Mail Order Bride –The Rachel Caloff Song
Music and lyrics by Elisa Korenne
A young Jewish girl in the Russian powderkeg
Abandoned by my father, my mother was dead
Unwanted but to care for my brothers five
I took another woman’s passport for a one-way ride
From a hard life to a new land
I became a mail order bride
First saw my husband on the New York dock
Come to take me to his North Dakota farm
Separate berths on the endless train
We disembarked on a featureless plain
Hard land for a new life
As a mail order bride
The women sang
The men beat time on tin pans
My mother in law put a flour sack over my head
On my wedding day I was blind
At least they couldn’t see me cry
New land same hard life
For a mail order bride
One-room winter shack w my husbands’ parents, brother and wife
Chickens under the bed, calf in the corner, cruel cold from the cracks
A hundred winds couldn’t relieve the stench,
I begged the gray skies for winter’s end
Hard life in a new land
Just another mail order bride
The women sang
The men beat time on tin pans
My mother in law put a flour sack over my head
On my wedding day I was blind
At least they couldn’t see me cry
New land same hard life
Hard life in a new land
Hard land for a new life
Just another mail order bride
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