Talking Dust Bowl

Back in Nineteen Twenty-Seven,
 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, rockin' an' a-rollin',
 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-goin' pretty fast, there wasn't even stoppin',
 A-bouncin' up and down, like popcorn poppin' --
 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 rollin' Ford a shove,
 An' I's a-gonna coast as far as I could --
 Commence coastin', pickin' up speed,
 Was a hairpin turn, I didn't make it.
 Man alive, I'm a-tellin' 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.