The Carroll County Accident

(album: In The Good Old Days - 1969)

Carroll County's pointed out as kind of square
The biggest thing that happens is the county fair
And I guess that's why it seemed like such a big event
What we all call the Carroll County accident
The wreck was on the highway just inside the line
Walter Browning lost his life and for a time
It seemed that Mary Ellen Jones would surely die
But she lived long enough for her to testify

Now Walter Browning was a happy married man
And he wore a golden wedding ring upon his hand
But it was gone nobody knew just where it went
He'd lost it in the Carroll County accident

Mary Ellen testified he flagged her down
Said he was sick and could she drive him into town
And no one even doubted what she said was true
Cause she was well respected in the county too

Now I went down to see the wreck like all the rest
The bloody seats, the broken glass, the tangled mess
But I found something no one else had even seen
Behind the dash in Mary's crumpled up machine

A little matchbox circled by a rubberband
And inside the ring from Walter Browning's hand
And it took a while to figure out just what it meant
The truth about the Carroll County accident

By dark of night I dropped the ring into a well
And I took a sacred oath that I would never tell
The secret of the Carroll County accident
Cause the county ordered dad a marble monument

I lost him in the Carroll County accident