We learned by heart most of the words to “This Land Is Your Land” in second grade, the year the duck and cover drills ended and I was fitted for black-rimmed glasses. Most of the words, that is, because we were second graders and, really, it was all about pounding out the chorus, right?
But which words? Did we skip over the verse about private property — did we, who went over fences and built forts in the undeveloped woods, even know what private property was? And how did the words of such a revolutionary figure end up printed in a patriotic suburban songbook at the peak of LBJ's presidency?
No telling.
But certainly none of us were acquainted with the torrent of alternate verses unearthed in the newly released Woody at Home, Volume 1 & 2, recorded in his Brooklyn apartment during 1951-52. Guthrie was between record labels, already knew something was bad wrong because doctors had told him he was an alcoholic or a schizophrenic or worse. By the end of 1952 he knew the name of the thing, Huntington's chorea, and that it was incurable.
