Talking Dust Bowl Blues

(Album: Dust Bowl Ballads - 1940)

Back in 1927
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, 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 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 rolling Ford a shove
An' I's a-gonna 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 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