A long lonesome go rolling down the Frisco Road
every mile feeling I was all alone.
In the places that I've seen
summer's fat and winter's lean
and don't you know I wish that I could go back home.
(Chorus)
I don't know where I left it
though it's always on my mind.
I ask the same old questions all the time.
Is the old town still the same?
Does anybody know my name?
The years slip by like munbers on an endless high way
sign.
(spoken)
Standing here in the breakdown lane, don't think I'll
make it today;
And I wish the road was a big freight train, blowing
and rolling my way.
I know the rain wouldn't seem so cold on the top of an
old boxcar,
And wherever it was I was trying to go, it wouldn't
seem half so far.
I remember the Roper yard cafe and a pretty little
beanery queen;
She gave those jailhouse spuds away to a bum she'd
never seen.
Well, I tipped her with a couple of rhymes on the back
of a placemat there,
And I've thought about her plenty of times when I
couldn't bum a square.
Or the time we rode on a piggy-back, punching the Great
Divide;
The blowing snow had iced the track and the train got
stuck inside;
The diesel fumes they got so thick I thought we'd all
be gassed,
Then they sanded her out just in the nick and punched
her through at last.
Now I don't claim to be too proud to shag a ride on my
thumb,
But I'd trade this whole hitch-hiking crowd for a
honest old railroad bum;
And if there ever comes a day when the rails have gone
to rust,
I'll put my jug and bindle away and give up in disgust.
Beyond these gentle Eastern hills and the soft New
England sky
Do the highball whistles echo still where the mile-long
blazers fly?
Sitting here by the toll road gates, I wonder as I
rest,
Do the heavy, clanking, lonely freights still thunder
a-way out West?
(sung)
Have you seen the morning sun putting shadows on the
run
As you were climbing out of some old reefer hole,
High above the roaring wheels? Then you know just how
it feels
To ride the tops and watch the prairies roll.