Another Merle Haggard song with a similar theme, his top 30 hit from 1973, “If We Make it Through December.”
This was actually first released as a Christmas song. Coming in the middle of the 1973 oil crisis, which sent gas prices for Americans through the roof, Haggard’s song echoes the worrying political and economic atmosphere of the time.
(Photo credit: David Falconer for the DOCUMERICA project, Environmental Protection Agency, January 1974)