Purgatory Road

Mama comes in from the kitchen
 She tells me to fetch my brother
 She wipes her hands on her apron
 And says don't be late for supper
 I walk out on the front porch
 The sun's abouty to die
 It's still so hot the old dogs wouldn't bark
 Even if a car's to drive by
 There's a blue green Buick
 And a flat black Ford
 Jacked up off the ground
 Daddy's sitting on a stump and he's looking bewildered
 At the parts lying all around
 We ain't been no where at all since the Fairlane threw a rod
 Whatever it is is being damned to hell by my daddy and God
 Some are here working on a passage to Heaven
 And others they can't carrry that load
 A few are left singining the blues on Purgatory Road
 It is just a mile or so to the edge of town
 There ain't much of one here now since
 The factories closed down
 You got no jobs you got no people you go no businesses
 The only thing left is the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah Witnesses
 Mama she took me to church one time gonan get me baptized
 Further on down the road, somethinig I realized
 Now you mught way it's contempt prior to investigation
 But nobody seems concerned
 About their Savior's procrastination
 Now just past the cemetery with its tumped over tomb stones
 There's a little tavern that's called the Devil's Backbone
 It's got your distilled spirits and Tennessee Sour Mash
 Ans a little sign that says In God we trust
 All others pay cash
 My brother's sitting on a chair in front of an old tweed amplifier
 He's playing bottle neck slide, steel on wire
 Now when his mother died and his daddy left my
 Momma she brought him home
 And even thought he wassn't blood she raised him as her own
 So now he sings them blues on an old Gibson 160E
 And he don't even know what color he is 'cause he can't see