Long, Long Ago

Long, Long Ago ( 5:54)
My daddy worked the coal shaft back in ’39,
Long, long ago.
His days were filled with darkness, diggin’ in the mine,
Long, long ago.
Mama raised us children best that she knew how,
Long, long ago.
She cooked the meals, mended clothes, and toiled behind the plow,
Long, long ago.

My brothers would collect the scattered coal from tandem loads,
Long, long ago.
My job was to maintain the bump we built across the road,
Long, long ago.

The day the siren sounded, mama’s teardrops rolled,
Long, long ago.
It took five weeks to find twelve bodies buried in that hole,
Long, long ago.












So I left to work the railroad, spent my years upon the track,
Long, long ago.
I was shoveling the very coal that broke my daddy’s back,
Long, long ago.

Now all my family’s lying under crosses on the hill
In that holler in Kentucky we called home.
Those strip mines have erased the mountain tops I used to know,
Ain’t no more jobs for workin’ men whose lives were built on coal.

- Lead break

This life done finally laid me down with a cross to call my own,
Long, long ago.
These hills, once filled with anthracite, are now filled with miners’ bones,
From long, long ago.
Long, long, long ago,
Long, long, long , long, long, long ago.