Tom T. Hall - Paradise lyrics

When I was a child my family would travel
Down to western Kentucky where
My parents were born
There's a backwards old town
That's often remembered
So many times that all my mem'ries're worn

Daddy won't you take me
Back to Muglenberg County
Down by the Green River where paradise lay
I'm sorry my son but you're
Too late in askin'
Mr peabody's coal train has hauled it away

Now sometimes we float on
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 rifles
But empty pop bottles was all we would kill

Then the coal company came with
The world's largest shovels
They tortured the timber and they
Stripped all the land
They dug for the coal till
The land was forsaken
And wrote it all down as the progress of man


When I die let my body
Float down the Green River
Let my soul roll on up to the Rochester Dam
I'll be halfway to heaven
With the paradise waitin'
Five miles away from wherever I am