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Apples Don't Fall from the Tree Lyrics
When I was five
I put on mama's high heel shoes
And paint my face
Dance across the living room
At Ruby's Place
Where the music was always playing
Girls were alive
While the men were saying
[Chorus]
Apples don't fall far from the tree
Hey honey, come sit on my knee
Apples don't fall far from the tree
And I remember mama's tears
When they said in a few years
I'd be something to see
At seventeen
I had me a diamond
And a string of pearls
Men said they preferred me
To the other girls
They took me to the best of places
But I could read it on their faces
[Chorus]
Then when mama died
I made up my mind
To get on a gray hound
Get out of this town
And leave it all behind
But life goes on
A child of three
Smiles up at me while she plays
The man I love
Has never heard of Ruby's Place
When he holds her with affection
He uses that old expression
[Chorus]
It is not "Rootbeers Place" it is "Ruby's Place" as with the first verse of the song (likely some sort of brothel her mom worked in).
A woman recounts her childhood growing up as a young girl in Ruby's Place (a brothel her mom worked in). The men would make suggestive remarks alluding to her potential to grow up and be a whore too like her mother ("Apples don't fall far from the tree"). It is kinda predatory when they say to a child in a sexual way "Hey hunny, come sit on me knee". It broke her mother's heart to see them sexualize her daughter like that, knowing that she too was setting a bad example.
Second verse as a blossoming teenager is how men would compliment her and lavish her with gifts, but all they really wanted was sex in return.
Finally, after her mother dies the singer decides to escape her past and reinvent her life. She meets and marries a good man. Her husband and father of her little daughter doesn't know about her growing up around pervy men in a brothel. He is paying a genuine compliment when he says "Apples don't fall far from the tree" and is affectionately saying to his young daugther, "Hey hunny, come sit on my knee."