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.