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Back in Nineteen |
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Twenty-Seven, |
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I had a little farm and |
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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 |
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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 |
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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' |
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Ford a shove, |
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An' I's a-gonna coast as far as |
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I could -- |
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Commence coastin', pickin' up speed, |
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Was a hairpin turn, |
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I didn't make it. |
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Man alive, |
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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 |
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West Coast broke, |
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So dad-gum hungry |
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I thought |
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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. |