Johnny Cash Album: Ride This Train Track: Loading Coal
Loading Coal Lyrics
Ride this train up and down and across a strange wonderful land It's almost like a fairyland when you to think about it You go through places with names like Tuscaloosa Kokomo Muskogee Oshkosh Saginaw Eureka Bandera Battle Creek Sioux City Chattanooga Hattiesburg Lynchburg and Baltinare Arkansas You see I'm a million different people from all over the world And I've been coming to this country for hundreds of years This was the Promised Land for me But let's not forget that when I came here There were already millions of people living in teepees along the rivers And hunting deer and buffalo for food and shelter And it's with a little regret that I think of how I pushed them back And crowded them out to claim this land for myself or for another country But the Indians' hearts must have been full of music For they left names with me that seem to sing Names like Mohawk Mandan Kickapoo Cree Yacoma Seminole Crow Shawnee Choctaw Delaware Fox Paiute Winnebago Cheyenne Blackfoot Navajo Ute Comanche Quapaw Creek Apache Sioux Chippewa Ardua Hupa Shoshone Mow Hicano Sage Menomini Shinouk Arapaho Nez Perce Iroquois Pony Cutenai Flathead Chickasaw Pueblo Yuma Pima Pomo Caddo Well a lot of them are still with me and I'm glad It's for sure their names will always be with me But let's look a little at the heart and muscle of this land Few things you don't read in books things that aren't taught in school Now you take this little town we're goin' through here this is Beach Creek Kentucky And right down there in the valley that's where our house used to be It was a little shotgun shack with a spring out back And a smokehouse and another little bitty house and that's about all My pa was a coalminer like most everybody in Mulengerg County Worked in the mines all his life I guess he didn't have much ambition to do anything else Cause they say coalmining kinda gets in your blood Matter of fact pa said if they ever drained the blood out of him It would be blacker than black strap moulesen When I was a kid I used to sit at the fireplace there with mom And wait on pa to get in from the mine And we'd sure get anxious if he was ever late Ma would rock back and forth and watch the clock listin' for pa to hit the front porch Then he'd come in nothin' clean but the whites of his eyes And he'd reach for that lie-soap and starts scrubbin' And I'd stand back and watch him and say to myself Boy I'll be glad when I get big enough to work in the mines
My pappy said when I was seventeen you're six feet tall and your face is clean And it don't look right for a boy that old to not make a livin' loadin' coal
Loadin' coal loadin' coal I'm a double first cousin to a dad blamed mole Never get rich for to save my soul and forty 'leven years a loadin' coal loadin' coal
Ain't never got acquainted with a dollar bill and I don't ever reckon that I ever will A dollar ain't made for a fellar I'm told that scoops up a livin' loadin' coal
Loadin' coal loadin' coal... [ ac.guitar ] I cussed everything in the mining camp from a shovel and my pick to my carbide lamp But I know mighty well till I grow old I'll still be a cussin' but loadin' coal
Loadin' coal loadin' coal... [ ac.guitar ] I know just as well as coal is black one of these days the mines were strike And I'll sit around starvin' till I'm finally told There's a nickel more a ton for loadin' coal
