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