A                  D 
    Back in nineteen twenty-seven,
        E 
    I had a little farm and I called that heaven.
                A                D 
    Well, the prices up and the rain come down,
            E 
    and I hauled my crops all into town.
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    I got the money, bought clothes and groceries,
     E                           A 
    fed the kids, and raised a family.

    
    Rain quit and the wind got high,
    and the black old dust storm filled the sky.
    And I swapped my farm for a Ford machine,
    and I poured it full of this gas-o-line.
    And I started, rockin' an' a-rolling',
    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,
    Got- a-goin' pretty fast, there wasn't even stopping',
    a-bouncing up and down, like popcorn popping'.
    Had a breakdown, sort of a nervous breakdown of some kind,
    there was a feller there, a mechanic feller, said it was engine trouble.

    Way up yonder on a mountain curve,
    a way up yonder in the piney wood,
    I gave that rolling Ford a shove,
    was a-gonna coast as far as I could.
    Commence coasting, 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
    and it flew halfway around the world,
    scattered wives and children
    all over the side of that mountain.

    We got out to the West Coast broke,
    so dad-gum hungry I thought I'd croak,
    so I bummed up a spud or two,
    and 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 could of seen through it.