Signed Tom Tinker

Signed Tom Tinker

In seventeen ninety-one, the tax came down,

On whiskey stills in frontier towns.

A farmer’s grain, once turned to drink,

Was hard-earned money at the brink.

No ready cash, no eastern bank,

Just winter stores and fields to thank.

The levy took what kept them fed,

And fear moved through each cabin bed.

The collector came with papers drawn,

The farmer saw his living gone.

Some answered wrong, with rage and pain—

Tar and feathers left their stain.

Washington marched to make law stand;

The rebels scattered from the land.

But long after the smoke had cleared,

The poor remembered who had feared.

Now tariffs rise across the line,

And somebody pays in corn and wine.

The vines go unpicked in the sun,

A harvest ends before begun.

A winery marks its bottles low,

To clear a warehouse, keep cash flow.

Kentucky bourbon, Tennessee rye,

Wait while Canadian orders die.

A slower still means less corn sold,

And fields absorb the cost untold.

Your tariffs without representation,

I choose to decline;

It is a historic fact: the poor

Are at the end of that line.

You sign the cost in Washington,

Then send the tax bill down as mine.

The Tinkers were pardoned

American justice forgave their sin

If history is to repeat itself

It sure looks like it's time again

Tar and feathers were not just justice;

They were shame made public view—

A clear warning to the government that this could be you .

The tar and the feathers were never about death

You can’t send a message through a man with no breath.

They marked him with pain to walk back in shame,

To say: “This tax is theft, and the people reject its claim.

Signed Tom Tinker

A warning that should live in memory,

The ghost of Tommy remains;

From frontier stills to tariff wars,

He walks through loss and pain.

It is a warning melted on a body and covered in shame

A warning to the taxman to remember Tommy's name

A warning melted on a body,

And covered in feathers and shame;

A warning that should live in memory—

The ghost of Tommy remains.

Signed Tom Tinker