Back in Ruby's day  (and any time prior to about the 1960s) they had a different morality than they do today. Even in the 1970s they were still prosecuting just the woman in prostitution cases while the second partner to the act, the man, was free to continue seeking  it at will.  There was a double standard and then some.  Back then, they had good girls and bad ones ....and Ruby was......well read the poem. 

  

                              

                                      

                

     NO COUNT RUBY
   

From some seedy shack she came,
and she was shanty poor.
Folks called Ruby many names-
sometimes Floozy...most times, whore.
The school boys, nearly all of them,
thought Ruby was fair game.
Though it was "hands off" other girls,
she was not the same.

Besides the run-down, squalid shack
from whence the girl had come,
Ruby was the daughter
of a shiftless, no-count bum.
A no-count drunkard's no-count kid....
she didn't count for much;
just good, they said, for midnight romps
and feeling up and such.

Two kinds of girls there were, they said;
the good ones and the bad.
And Ruby didn't count for much-
and Ruby could be had.
"Yeah...Ruby could be had...in fact
she had been had", they said.
And there were quite a few who      
              bragged
that they had shared her bed.

Though she was fairly circumspect,
it really didn't matter.
Many of the boys in school
bragged that they had "had her".
Ruby stopped attending school,
though teachers deemed her bright.
She worked down at the five-and-dime,
and dished out hash at night.

"No-Count Ruby" had a form
that made the men look twice;
and there were quite a few of them
who claimed they paid her price.
Bachelors all around the town
claimed that they had "made her";
and married men in darkened bars,
claimed that they had "laid her".

               *  *  *  *  *  *  *
Through the years, though Ruby grew
quite serious and staid,
and though her beauty withered'
the gossip didn't fade.
Folks said she had her father's taste
for rot-gut hootch and gin;
that in her run-down shanty,
she'd "put out for a fin".

She went through life beleaguered...
the but of bar room jokes-
just waiting on the tables
and serving other folks.
When  Ruby died at fifty,
an autopsy revealed
in cold and scientific fact
what wagging tongues concealed.

It seems she was a virgin
up till the day she died;
but no one ever would admit
that anyone had lied.
In bars, the talk still turns to "broads"-
the good ones and the bad;
and they sometimes speak of Ruby still-
the good times they all had.

                        Bette Wolf Duncan
                           copyright2000 All rights reserved.

 

 

                                                         

Too good to pass up without passing it on.....

This one's from S. Omar Barker taken from Cowboy Poetry, Classic Rhymes By S. Omar Barker, Cowboy Miner Productions. It goes to the subject matter of No Count Ruby.  Enjoy!
                                                                                                                                             
                                             
                                                      
                                                      FIRESIDE WINDIES
                                       Now cowboys 'round the fire at night,
                                                   They tell it wide and high
                                              Of Broncs they've rode, and gals they've kissed
                                                    In other days gone by.
                                              Till by the time the fire goes down
                                                    And all hands hit the straw,
                                              They've rode more broncs and kissed more gals
                                                     Than a cowboy ever saw.
                                                                    S. Omar Barker