Texas, 1947

(album: Look At Them Beans - 1975)

Being six years old I had seen some trains before
So it's hard to figure out what I'm at the depot for.

Trains're big and black and smoking steam screaming at the wheels.
Bigger'n anything there is least that's the way she feels
Trains're big and black and smoking louder'n July 4th
But everybody's acting like this might be something more
Than just picking up the mail or the soldiers from the war
Something even old man Wyman's never seen before.

And it's late afternoon on a hot Texas day
Something strange was going on and we's all in the way

There are fifty or sixty people just setting on their cars
And the ole men left their dominoes and come down from the bars
And everybody's checking old Jack Kittrell checks his watch
And us kids put our ears to the rails to hear 'em pop
So we already knowed it when they finally said train time
You'd have thought that Judgement Day was rolling down the line
Cause things got real quiet and mama jerked me back
But not before I get the chance to lay a nickel on the track

Look out here she comes she's coming look out there she goes she's gone
Screaming straight through Texas like a mad dog cyclone
Big and red and silver she don't lay no smoke
She's a fast rolling streamline come to show the folks
I said look out here she comes she's coming look out there she goes she's gone
Screaming straight through Texas like a mad dog cyclone

Lord she never even stopped
She left fifty or sixty people still setting on their cars
Wondering what it's coming to and how it got this far
And me I got a nickel smashed flatter than a dime
By a mad dog runaway red silver streamline train

Look out here she comes she's coming look out there she goes she's gone
Screaming straight through Texas like a mad dog cyclone
Big and red and silver she don't lay no smoke
She's a fast rolling streamline come to show the folks
I said look out here she comes she's coming look out there she goes she's gone
Screaming straight through Texas like a mad dog cyclone