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