Let Him Roll

(album: Johnny Cash Is Coming To Town - 1987)

Let him roll, boys let him roll
I bet he's gone to dallas rest his soul

Now he was a wino, tried and true
Done about everything there is to do
He worked on freighters, he worked in bars
He worked on farms, 'n he worked on cars

Now it was white port whine, that put that look in his eye
That grown men get when they need to cry
And we sat down on the curb to rest
And his head just fell down on his chest

He said "every single day it gets
Just a little bit harder to handle and yet..."
Then he lost the thread and his mind got cluttered
The words just rolled off down in the gutter

He was a elevator man in a cheap hotel
In exchange for the rent on a one room cell
And he's years old before his time
No thanks to the world, and the white port wine

And he said "son", he always called me son
He said, "life for you has just begun"
And then he told me the story that i heard before
How he fell in love with a dallas whore

He could cut through the years to the very night
That it all ended, in a whore house fight
And she turned his last proposal down
In favor of being a girl about town

Now it's been seventeen years right in line
And he ain't been straight none of the time
It's too many years of fighting the weather
And too many nights of not being together

So he died...

Let him roll, boys let him roll
I bet he's gone to dallas rest his soul
Let him roll, boys let him roll
He always thought that heaven
Was just a dallas whore

When they went through his personal affects
In among the stubs from the welfare checks
Was a crumbling picture of a girl in a door
An address in dallas, and nothing more

Well the welfare people provided the priest
And a couple from the mission down the street
Sang amasing grace, and nobody cried
'cept some lady in black way off to the side

We all left and she's standing there
The black veil covering her silver hair
And one-eyed john said her name was alice
She used to be a whore in dallas

Let him roll, boys let him roll
I bet he's gone to dallas rest his soul
Let him roll, boys let him roll
He always thought that heaven
Was just a dallas whore
Let him roll, boys let him roll