Talking Dust Bowl Blues

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.