Paradise

When I was a child my family would travel Down to western Kentucky where my parents were born And there's a backwards old town that's often remembered So many times that my mem'ries are worn And daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County Down by the Green River where paradise lay Well I'm sorry my child but you're too late in askin' Mr Peabody's coal train has hauled it away Well sometimes we traveled right down the Green River By the abandoned old prison down by Adrie Hill Where the air smelled like snakes and we'd shoot with the pistols But empty pop bottles was all we would kill And daddy won't you take me back... Then the coal company came with the world's largest shovels They tortured the timber and they stripped all the land Well they dug for the coal till the land was forsaken Then we wrote it all down as the progress of man And daddy won't you take me back... Mr Peabody's coal train has hauled it away