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.