When I was a child, my family would travel,
Down to western Kentucky, where my parents were born.
There's a backwoods old trail that's often remembered,
So many times, that my memory is worn.
Chorus:
And Daddy, won't you take me back to Muhlenburg County.
Down by the Green River where paradise lay.
Well, I'm sorry my son, but you're too late in asking,
Mr. Peabody's coal train has hauled it away.
Sometimes, we would travel down by the Green River,
To an abandoned old prison, down by Adrie's Hill.
Where the air smelled like snakes, and we'd shoot with our pistols,
But empty pop bottles is all we would kill.
Chorus
Well the coal company came with the world's largest shovel,
They tortured the timber and they stripped all the land.
And they dug for their coal till the land was forsaken,
And they wrote it all down as the progress of man.
Chorus
When I die let my ashes float down the Green River,
Let my soul float on up to the Rochester Dam.
I'll be half way to heaven with paradise waiting,
Just five miles away from wherever I am.
Chorus