Talking Dustbowl Blues

[Verse] 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 old dust storm filled the sky And I swapped my farm for a Ford machine And I poured it full of this gasoline And I started, rocking an' a-rolling 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-going pretty fast, there wasn't even stopping A-bouncing up and down, like popcorn popping Had a breakdown, sort of a nervous bust-down of some kind There was a feller there, a mechanic feller Said it was engine trouble Way up yonder on a mountain curve It's way up yonder in the piney wood An' I give that rolling Ford a shove An' I's a-going to coast as far as I could -- Commence coasting, picking up speed Was a hairpin turn, I didn't make it Man alive, I'm a-telling 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 children's 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