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When i was a child my family would travel |
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Down to western kentucky where my parents were born |
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And there's a backwards old town that's often remembered |
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So many times that my memories are worn. |
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Chorus: |
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And daddy won't you take me back to muhlenberg county |
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Down by the green river where paradise lay |
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Well, i'm sorry my son, but you're too late in asking |
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Mister peabody's coal train has hauled it away |
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Well, sometimes we'd travel right down the green river |
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To the abandoned old prison down by adrie hill |
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Where the air smelled like snakes and we'd shoot with our pistols |
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But empty pop bottles was all we would kill. |
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Repeat chorus: |
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Then the coal company came with the world's largest shovel |
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And they tortured the timber and stripped all the land |
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Well, they dug for their coal till the land was forsaken |
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Then they wrote it all down as the progress of man. |
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Repeat chorus: |
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When i die let my ashes float down the green river |
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Let my soul roll on up to the rochester dam |
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I'll be halfway to heaven with paradise waitin' |
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Just five miles away from wherever i am. |
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Repeat chorus: |