Talkin' Dust Bowl

Back in nineteen twenty seven

I had a little farm, I called that Heaven.

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 big family.

But the rain quit and the wind got high

A black old dust storm filled the sky.

I traded my farm for a Ford machine

Poured it full of this gasoline

Started rocking and rolling

Deserts and mountains to California.

Way up yonder on a mountain road

Hot motor and a heavy load

Going pretty fast I wasn't even stopping

Bouncing up and down like popcorn popping

I had a breakdown ?

Kind of a nervous bustdown.

The mechanic fellow there charged me five bucks,

Said it was engine trouble.

Way up yonder on a mountain curve

Way up yonder in the piney wood

I gave that rolling Ford a shove

And I coast as far as I could

Commencing rolling

Picking up speed

Come a hairpin turn and...

I didn't make it.

No man alive I'm telling you

That the fiddles and the guitars really flew.

That Ford took off like a flying squirrel

And it flew halfway around the world

Scattered the wives and children

All over the side of that mountain.

Got to California so dad gum broke

Dad gum hungry that I thought I'd choke.

I bummed up a spud or two

And a wife fixed up some 'tater stew.

We poured the kids full of it

Mighty skinny kids

Looked like a tribe of thermometers running around.

No man I swear to you

That was surely mighty thin stew

So damn thin I really mean

You could read a magazine right through it

Look at the pictures, too

Pretty whisky bottles and naked women.

Always have thought and always have figured

That if that damn stew had been just a little bit thinner

Some of these here politicians could have seen through it.