Talking Dust Bowl Blues

Lyrics

Back in Nineteen Twenty-Seven I had a little farm that 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 Well the 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 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 Got it goin' pretty fast, it wasn't even stoppin' And bouncin' up and down, like popcorn poppin' I had a breakdown, sort of a nervous breakdown of some kind There was a feller there, a mechanic feller Said it was en-gine trouble Way up yonder on a mountain curve Way up yonder in the piney wood I give that rollin' Ford a shove And was gonna coast as far as I could Commence coastin', pickin' up speed It was a hairpin turn, I didn't make it Man alive, I'm a-tellin' you And the fiddles and the guitars really flew And that Ford took off like a flying squirrel And it flew halfway around the world Scattered wives and children All over the side of that mountain We got out to the West Coast broke So dad-gum hungry I thought I'd croak So I bummed up a spud or two And 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 Well I always figured If it'd been just a little bit thinner Some of these here politicians Coulda seen through it