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,
Is a-goin pretty fast, there wasnt 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,
Its way up yonder in the piney wood,
An I give that rollin
Ford a shove,
An Is a-gonna coast as far as
I could --
Commence coastin, pickin up speed,
Was a hairpin turn,
I didnt make it.
Man alive,
Im 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
Id 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 itd been just a little bit thinner,
Some of these here politicians
Coulda seen through it.