Back in Nineteen Twenty-Seven,
|
I had a little farm and I called that heaven.
|
Well, the prices up and the rain come down,
|
And I hauled my crops all into town --
|
I got the money, bought clothes and groceries,
|
Fed the kids, and raised a family.
|
Rain quit and the wind got high,
|
And the black ol' dust storm filled the sky.
|
And I swapped my farm for a Ford machine,
|
And I poured it full of this gas-i-line --
|
And I started, rockin' an' a-rollin',
|
Over the mountains, out towards the old Peach Bowl.
|
Way up yonder on a mountain road,
|
I had a hot motor and a heavy load,
|
I’s a-goin' pretty fast, there wasn’t even stoppin',
|
A-bouncin' up and down, like popcorn poppin' --
|
Had a breakdown, sort of a nervous bustdown of some kind,
|
There was a feller there, a mechanic feller,
|
Said it was en-gine trouble.
|
Way up yonder on a mountain curve,
|
It’s way up yonder in the piney wood,
|
An' I give that rollin' Ford a shove,
|
An' I’s a-gonna coast as far as I could --
|
Commence coastin', pickin' up speed,
|
Was a hairpin turn, I didn’t make it.
|
Man alive, I’m a-tellin' you,
|
The fiddles and the guitars really flew.
|
That Ford took off like a flying squirrel
|
An' it flew halfway around the world --
|
Scattered wives and childrens
|
All over the side of that mountain.
|
We got out to the West Coast broke,
|
So dad-gum hungry I thought I’d croak,
|
An' I bummed up a spud or two,
|
An' my wife fixed up a tater stew --
|
We poured the kids full of it,
|
Mighty thin stew, though,
|
You could read a magazine right through it.
|
Always have figured
|
That if it’d been just a little bit thinner,
|
Some of these here politicians
|
Coulda seen through it. |