Johnny Cash - Texas, 1947 lyrics

Being six years old I had
Seen some trains before
So it's hard to figure out what
I'm at the depot for

Trains are big and black and smoking
Steam screaming at the wheels
Bigger and anything there is least
That's the way she feels
Trains are big and black and
Smoking louder July 4th
But everybody's acting like this
Might be something more
Than just picking up the mail or
The soldiers from the war
Something even old man Wyman's
Never seen before
And it's late afternoon on a hot Texas day
Something strange was going on and we
Are all in the way
There are fifty or sixty people
Just setting on their cars
And the ole men left their dominoes
And come down from the bars
And everybody's checking old Jack
Kittrell checks his watch
And us kids put our ears to
The rails to hear them pop
So we already know it when
They finally said train time
You'd have thought that Judgment Day
Was rolling down the line
Because things got real quiet and
Mama jerked me back
But not before I get the chance to
Lay a nickel on the track

Look out here she comes she's coming look
Out there she goes she's gone
Screaming straight through Texas like
A mad dog cyclone big and red and silver she
Don't lay no smoke
She's a fast rolling streamline come
To show the folks
I said look out here she comes she's coming
Look out there she goes she's gone
Screaming straight through Texas like
A mad dog cyclone

Lord she never even stopped
She left fifty or sixty people
Still setting on their cars
Wondering what it's coming to and
How it got this far and me I got a nickel
Smashed flatter than a dime
By a mad dog runaway
Red silver streamline train